Militants bomb schools in Pak tribal area

Four foreign fighters and a woman were killed in a hospital raid by Pakistani forces while militants blew up two boys' schools yesterday in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border.
A 21-room government high school and five-room primary school side by side in Shago village of Bajaur district were blow up with explosives overnight, local administration official Muhammad Jameel Khan told AFP.
"It is the work of Taliban militants, they have destroyed several schools in the past in reaction to military operations," Khan said, adding that there were no casualties.
Gul Rehman, a Bajaur education officer, said militants had bombed or set ablaze more than 60 schools in a year in the district, which is at the northern tip of the tribal belt and troubled by Taliban attacks.
Earlier Pak commandos raided a private hospital before dawn in a Taliban stronghold near the Afghan border Thursday, killing four foreign militants and a woman, officials said.
Troops laid siege to the private clinic in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, at 2:00am (2100 GMT) sparking gun battles until around 7:00am (0200 GMT), local administration and intelligence officials said.
The soldiers also captured 27 militants, 10 of whom were wounded in the gunbattle that broke out during the raid in South Waziristan, a Pakistani Taliban stronghold targeted by the army in a major ground offensive in mid-October, the officials said.