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.