Four security personnel and two schoolchildren were killed in bombing and mortar attacks in northwestern Pakistan.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle carrying security forces in Pakistan’s restive northwest, killing four officers and wounding five, officials said Thursday, and the same day two schoolchildren were killed , when a mortar exploded near them at another location in Pakistan. northwest.

The road explosion occurred on Wednesday in the South Waziristan region, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, local police officer Dilawar Khan said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, have stepped up their attacks in the region since their ally, the Afghan Taliban, seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021.

Later in the day, a mortar fired by insurgents crashed near a road in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Tirah Valley on Wednesday, killing two schoolchildren who were walking to school, police said.

The Pakistani military has carried out dozens of operations against the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents in South Waziristan and other nearby former tribal regions, but the militants continue to carry out frequent attacks.

Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi met Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong in Islamabad on Thursday to brief him on the investigation into Tuesday’s attack in which a security guard shot and wounded two Chinese nationals at a textile factory in the port city of Karachi, allegedly over a private dispute .

China has often demanded improved security for its citizens in Pakistan to work as part of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. An unknown number of Chinese also work in factories in the country.