US Edition Police said dozens more were injured in the attack in the village of Shah Hasan Khan, in the troubled Bannu district.
“The villagers were watching the match between the two village teams when the bomber drove his double-cabin pick-up vehicle into them and blew it up,” said Habibullah Khan, the local chief of police. “There was a match between two village teams and a lot of people were watching it.”
Police said the attack was possibly retaliation against local residents who had set up a militia to expel Taliban militants from the area, which is near South Waziristan, where Pakistan's army last month completed a military offensive against extremists sheltering in the lawless territory that borders Afghanistan.
“The locality has been a hub of militants. Locals set up a militia and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be reaction to their expulsion,” said Ayub Khan, a regional police chief.
The bombing took place after Pakistan’s security forces said they had foiled a suicide bomb plot against the country’s sensitive Wagah border crossing with India.
The plot, which if carried out would have sabotaged the first tentative steps to improve relations between the two countries following the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, was uncovered after Pakistani intelligence agents arrested 10 militants including the Taliban’s leader in Punjab, known as Khalilullah, and a 17-year-old boy who was being groomed to carry the bomb.
Defence and intelligence analysts said relations between India and Pakistan would have been plunged into a new crisis had the militants succeeded. The crossing at Wagah between Lahore and Amritsar has emotional significance for Indians and Pakistanis after being the scene of communal bloodshed between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims at partition. Wagah is also popular with tourists who visit it to watch its famously aggressive border-closing ceremony at dusk when guards from both sides parade like peacocks, kicking their legs in the air.
The arrest of Khalilullah was a major breakthrough for Pakistan’s security services and a serious setback for the Taliban which has collaborated with other militant groups to make Southern Punjab a new front in their jihad. In the last year militant groups have twice attacked elite police training academies and the Sri Lankan cricket team when it was playing a test match in Lahore.
The disclosure of the arrests coincided with a series of conciliatory moves which raised hopes of a thaw in relations. On Friday diplomats in Islamabad and New Delhi exchanged lists of nuclear installations in their countries, while a joint campaign was launched by the Times of India and Pakistan’s Daily Jang newspaper group to persuade their readers to “love” one another and help overcome mutual suspicion. The mood of optimism was raised further by an announcement that India will soon release 31 Pakistani fishermen arrested in Indian waters amid hopes that the move will lead to the further release of an estimated 600 fishermen held in India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile India’s national boxing team arrived in the Pakistani city of Karachi for the first sporting event contested by the two countries on home soil since the Mumbai attacks.