The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Miranshah

Pro-Taliban militants blew up a girls' school in Pakistan's restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan, security officials said Sunday.

The school building was destroyed in the attack in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan region, after militants planted explosives there late Saturday, a security official said on condition of anonymity.

"There were no casualties as the building was empty," he added.

The attack came amid an upsurge in violence in Pakistan's deeply conservative tribal zone where militants consider female education un-Islamic.

The region has seen previous attacks on video and music shops blamed on militants emulating the ultra-orthodox Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until their ouster in a US-led invasion in 2001.

The attack on the school was the second in two days after a similar incident in another tribal town of Khar in Bajaur district.

Violence in the tribal region straddling Afghanistan has spiked since an army raid at a pro-Taliban mosque in the capital Islamabad in July.

Almost 400 people have been killed in the violence, mainly in suicide attacks, an AFP tally of the incidents shows.