5 Pak policemen killed in northwest ambush

Gunmen ambushed a police patrol in Pakistan's volatile northwest yesterday, killing four officers, while a roadside bomb killed a member of another security unit elsewhere in the region, officials said.
Two officers died during the ambush on the outskirts of Peshawar city early Monday, while two others died later at a hospital from multiple bullet wounds, senior police official Nisar Khan said.
The roadside bomb targeted a vehicle of the Frontier Constabulary in the Bannu area, killing one and wounding seven constabulary officers, local hospital official Mohammad Jawed said.
One of the wounded was a senior constabulary officer, Bannu police chief Iqbal Marwat said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for either attack, but Taliban militants in the region frequently target security forces.
The police were patrolling on a road that leads to the Khyber tribal region, an area that has witnessed numerous militant attacks due to its status as a supply route for US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is in the midst of a major offensive against Taliban fighters in the northwestern Swat Valley and is in the early stages of an operation in the South Waziristan tribal region targeting the Pakistani Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud.
The US supports the offensives, saying its Muslim ally must eliminate militant safe havens for its own stability's sake as well as to lessen the threat those fighters pose to the war effort in neighbouring Afghanistan.