PESHAWAR, Nov 6: Four suspected foreign militants and as many members of their family were killed, and their local facilitator was injured when an explosive device they were making went off in Mir Ali sub-division of North Waziristan Agency, officials told Dawn on Sunday.

The incident took place at Mosaka village, about 200km from Miramshah, at around 1:30am on Saturday, said an official of the political administration.

He said that the four militants, apparently Arabs, were making a bomb which exploded, blowing up the room of their mud compound and killing all the inmates -– four men, a woman, and three minor girls.

An official of the Inter-Service Public Relations in Peshawar said that a woman named Misbah had rented out the house to the Arab family. Misbah lived next door and was injured in the explosion, he said, adding that the house-owner escaped soon after the incident.

The ISPR official said that the foreign militants had been living among the local population, making it difficult for security forces to net them due to ‘cultural sensitivity’.

A political official said they had asked tribal elders to hand over Misbah to authorities. They had been warned that if they failed to hand over the accused, they would be punished under the collective responsibility clause of the Frontier Crime Regulation, he added.

Most of tribesmen in the area live in fort-like mud houses and adhere to cultural and Islamic traditions.