Attacks kill troops in Pakistan

About 30 people have been killed in northwest Pakistan in a surge of violence which officials say could be revenge against a government assault on a mosque in the capital last week. Also on Sunday, tribal elders in the North Waziristan region called off a 10-month peace deal with the government after accusing authorities of violating the pact.

About 90 people, most of them paramilitary soldiers and police, have been killed in attacks in the northwest since July 3, when security forces in Islamabad surrounded the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex following clashes with armed students.

Pakistani forces stormed the mosque and religious school compound a week later, killing an estimated 75 supporters of Lal Masjid's leaders, brothers Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

Backlash

Early on Sunday, 14 people, 11 of them paramilitary soldiers, were killed in a suicide-bomb ambush on a patrol in the Swat valley in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).