The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Islamabad

At least six people died Saturday morning in northwestern Pakistan when a suicide bomber blew himself up, an army spokesman said.

The suicide bomber riding on a bicycle blew himself up near an army camp in Nowshehra, a city in North West Frontier Province, about 120 kilometers northwest of Islamabad, the spokesman said. He said the dead comprised the suicide bomber, two soldiers and three civilians.

Six people were also wounded in the attack in the town of Nowshehra about 75 miles northwest of Islamabad, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said.

A number of suicide attacks have been carried out recently in several regions along Pakistan's wild frontier with Afghanistan.

On Monday, a suicide car bomber wounded five children on an air force bus carrying them to school near Kamra, about 30 miles northwest of Islamabad. A similar attack killed 12 people the day before in Swat, a northern valley where the army is battling followers of a pro-Taliban cleric.

Two suicide attackers also hit a military checkpoint in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing 10 people, officials said.

The bomber, who was on a bicycle, detonated his explosives at a checkpost outside an army centre in the garrison city of Nowshera, 130 kilometres (80 miles) west of the capital Islamabad, a military spokesman told AFP.

"Five people have lost their lives, three civilians and two army men," spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said.

Police also confirmed the death toll.

The attack came just hours before President Pervez Musharraf was due to lift a controversial state of emergency he imposed in November, citing a wave of attacks that have primarily targeted Pakistan's armed forces.

Around 800 people have been killed in attacks this year, more than half of those in suicide attacks carried out since July -- when the army killed about 100 people in a raid on a radical, pro-Taliban mosque in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is asking for more security before taking her election campaign to the southwestern city of Quetta, after two suicide bombers killed 10 people there, her party said Friday.

Bhutto is expected to travel Saturday to Quetta, near the Afghan border, two days after the double attack at a military checkpoint.

The former prime minister has been closely guarded since she returned to Pakistan from exile on Oct. 18 to compete in next month's parliamentary elections.

However, Bhutto's security blanket failed to prevent a suicide attack that killed 149 people during her homecoming parade in the southern city of Karachi. Investigators have yet to identify those responsible for either that attack or Thursday's blasts in Quetta.

AFP, Kabul

Two bombs struck the Afghan capital Saturday, one of them killing five civilians, while nine people died in new attacks in a Taliban insurgency that is in its bloodiest year so far, officials said.

A car-bomb placed outside Kabul police headquarters tore through a busy area of the city, killing at least four civilian bystanders, officials and a witness said. The second bomb was remote-controlled and detonated near the city's main jail, causing only minor damage to a military vehicle, the defence ministry said.

The extremist Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the car-bomb, saying it was aimed at the city police who share a compound with the governor's office and courts. "Five civilians have been killed and two police have been wounded. Some civilians have been wounded too," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

The government ambulance service said however one of two dead bodies it evacuated was that of a policeman. Seven wounded people were also evacuated, said the regional coordinator of the Kabul Ambulance Service, Badrt-Rija Badar.

The interior ministry said the bombing was "unprecedented" and appeared to be a new "terrorist tactic." Afghanistan has been gripped by a wave of violence that has grown in the past two years and is largely attributed to the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush Friday urged North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to fully disclose his country's nuclear programs after Kim gave a "verbal reply" to an unprecedented letter from Bush.

"There's a way forward for Kim Jong-Il, and an important step is a full declaration of programs, materials that may have been developed to create weapons, as well as the proliferation activities of the regime," said Bush. The US president did not specify a timetable, and top US officials have suggested that a December 31 deadline for a full declaration may slip into early 2008. Bush did not comment on North Korea's response to his first direct communication with Kim, a December 1 letter. The White House confirmed an earlier announcement that North Korea had provided a "verbal reply" via diplomats in New York.

AFP, Gaza City

The Palestinians are capable of launching a new uprising against Israeli occupation like the intifadas of 1987 and 2000, exiled Islamist leader Khaled Meshaal said in comments published on Saturday. "Our people are capable of launching a third or fourth intifada until victory is ours," the Damascus-based Hamas chief said in comments posted on his movement's website on the 20th anniversary of its creation shortly after the launch of the first intifada.

"Whoever thinks that Hamas has reached a dead end is wrong," said Meshaal, whose movement seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June but has since faced international isolation.