Bomb Kills Suspected Pakistan Militant

A suspected militant was killed when a bomb he was planting outside a music shop in a remote area of northwestern Pakistan exploded prematurely Saturday, police said.

The explosion happened just after dawn in a market in Luki Murwat, about 44 miles southeast of Dera Ismail Khan, a city in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.

Ashraf Zaman, an area police chief, said the attacker who was aged about 20 wanted to target the music shop, but he accidentally exploded the device.

"We saw his body parts, but we have no other information about this terrorist," he said

The blast damaged 10 shops, but no one was injured because the market was closed at the time, he said. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion, but Zaman said officers suspected Islamic militants — who in recent months had distributed pamphlets warning music shops to close down.

Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, and such blasts are common in deeply conservative northwestern areas, where pro-Taliban extremist religious groups deem music and movies to be offensive to Islam.

The Taliban militia banned music and television in neighboring Afghanistan before its ouster from power in late 2001, and remnants of the regime are also believed to be hiding in the province and elsewhere.