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KHAR: Authorities on Wednesday arrested a woman allegedly planning to blow herself up in the Bajaur tribal region where 43 people were killed two months ago in a female suicide attack, officials said.
“Security forces and local administration officials raided a house near Khar on Wednesday morning and arrested a woman wearing a suicide vest,” senior local official Sohail Khan told AFP.
He said the raid was ordered on a tip off that women were being trained as suicide bombers in the residential area of Siddiquabad near Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district.
He said five other people were also arrested, including two other women from the same house.
“All six people are being interrogated,” he added, giving no details.
Two local intelligence officials confirmed the raid and arrests.
In Pakistan's first known female suicide attack, a woman wearing a bomb under her burqa struck near a UN food distribution point on December 25.
Security forces have carried out a series of military operations against the Taliban and other militants in Bajaur since August 2008.
The military has claimed repeatedly to have eliminated the militant threat.
Bajaur is one of seven districts in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, which the United States considers the global headquarters of al Qaeda.
