At least 14 Pakistanis, including 11 soldiers, have been killed in a series of bomb blasts and gunfire with fighters in the northwestern region.

The blasts hit a convoy of police and paramilitary troops as they passed through the town of Matta near Swat, an area where the Taliban has strong support.

One intelligence official said: “It appeared to be an ambush. There were three blasts of improvised explosive devices, followed by an exchange of fire.”

Sunday’s attack comes a day after a suicide bomber killed 18 Pakistani soldiers in the tribal region of North Waziristan on the Afghan border.

Meanwhile, pro-Taliban fighters in the region are reported to have formally scrapped a controversial peace accord reached with the government last year.

Pamphlets distributed in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, said: “We are ending the agreement today.”

The Pakistani army has been moving in more troops into the tribal areas after Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, said last week he would crush extremists and “root them out from every corner of the country”.

Earlier blasts

Eight people were killed by suicide blasts on Thursday, followed by a Pakistani police discovery of a car packed with seven suicide vests, 100 mortar shells and other explosives in northwestern Dera Ismail Khan town on Friday.

Musharraf has provoked anger in the region after this week’s army assault on a mosque complex in Islamabad that left at least 86 people dead.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Pakistan, says many analysts feel Musharraf is plotting a dangerous course in the region where the military is at risk of confronting its own people.

Hyder says his policies are not going down well and there is a definite risk that attacks in the area will increase.

General Assad Durrani, former head of Pakistani intelligence, told Al Jazeera: “If you look at the pattern of the last five to six years, ever since we joined the so-called ‘war on terror’, there have been enough warnings from the people of this area to suggest that there would be some reprisal attacks.

“The warning from the president may be now … but experts had already said many years ago that this was likely to happen.”

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A suicide bomber has killed at least 24 Pakistani soldiers in the remote and volatile tribal area near the Afghan border.

An army spokesman said 29 other troops were also wounded when a car packed with explosives was driven into a military convoy in north Waziristan.

Initial reports had said that 13 soldiers had been killed when the bomber struck the convoy around 50km north of the region’s main town, Miran Shah.

Major General Waheed Arshad said the death toll could rise since troops were searching for one of four vehicles attacked that rolled off the road.

The attack is the latest deadly incident to hit the region over the last few days.

Opposition

Two suicide blasts killed eight people on Thursday, and police on Friday said they seized three men and a car packed with seven suicide vests, 100 mortar shells and other explosives in northwestern Dera Ismail Khan town.

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, has provoked anger in the region after this week’s army assault on the pro-Taliban mosque complex in Islamabad that left 86 people dead.

Musharraf however has warned he would root out what he calls extremists and has deployed extra troops to the border areas with Afghanistan, remote and lawless regions that are believed to have become hideouts for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in northwest Pakistan, says many analysts feel Musharraf is plotting a dangerous course in the region where the military is at risk of confronting its own people.

Hyder says his policies are not going down well and there is a definite risk that attacks in the area will increase.

Thousands of Islamic protesters on Friday called for jihad and burnt effigies of Musharraf and a puppet of “Uncle Sam”.

The Pakistani president is a strong supporter of the US-led “war on terror.”

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Thousands have protested across Pakistan against a government raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque that left more than 100 dead.

Police tightened security nationally on Friday in an effort to foil possible revenge attacks and seized three suspected suicide bombers and a car filled with explosives in the northwest town of Dera Ismail Khan.

More than 1,200 demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, after emerging from mosques following afternoon prayers in Karachi, the country’s largest city.

Syed Munawwar Hasan, a religious leader, told the crowd: “Musharraf is going an extra mile to implement the agenda of America in this part of the world.”

Jihad call

In the capital Islamabad, hundreds called for jihad and chanted “Musharraf is a killer” and “Glory be to the Red Mosque martyrs” at a rally organised by Pakistan’s Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of religious political parties.

Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Hydri, the group’s deputy leader, told the gathering: “This carnage will prove to be the last nail in the coffin of Musharraf’s dictatorial rule in Pakistan.

“Now there will be Red Mosques everywhere in Pakistan.”

Smaller rallies were held in Rawalpindi, Lahore, Peshawar, and elsewhere a day after Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal endorsed a call by 13,000 religious schools for a nationwide protest against the attack on the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in Islamabad.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of al-Qaeda, and the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan have called for attacks, including suicide bombings, against government targets.

Abdul Aziz Ghazi, brother of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the Red Mosque leader killed in the eight-day mosque siege, called for an “Islamic revolution”.

Police raid

Two suicide attacks were reported on Thursday, a day after the siege ended in a hail of bullets and explosions that wiped out armed students and possible Uzbek fighters inside the sprawling mosque compound.

Police on Friday raided a house in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan and arrested three suicide bombers who were preparing for attacks, said Niaz Quereshi, a police spokesman.

Inside the mosque

Kamal Hyder surveys the damage in the Red Mosque

Quereshi said five so-called suicide vests, 100 mortar shells, two rockets and one landmine were seized.

Violence across northwestern Pakistan has killed at least 35 people since the fighting at the mosque began last week, prompting the army to send troops to at least four parts of the region to contain the backlash.

Musharraf speech

Musharraf, speaking on television on Thursday night, said he was resolved to eradicate extremism across Pakistan.

“Extremism and terrorism will be defeated in every corner of the country,” Musharraf said.

He said that madrassas will not be tolerated if they inculcate violence among students, like some under the Red Mosque’s umbrella did.

Tariq Azeem Khan, Pakistan’s deputy information minister, said that the government has taken “appropriate steps to safeguard the lives and property of common people, and to ensure that no one damages public property.”

On Friday, the Supreme Court ordered the government to release by Monday all persons arrested at the Red Mosque if they were not involved in major crimes.

Tariq Khokhar, deputy attorney-general, said that 632 people, including the wife of Red mosque leader Abdul Aziz and his two daughters, were arrested during the operation. Some 386 people have already been released.

Khokhar, quoting an official government report, said 102 people died in the Red Mosque violence, including 91 civilians and 11 military personnel. He said 248 were injured, including 204 civilians and 44 military.

Opposition figures claim the death toll is higher, but none has offered any evidence.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, president of Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, has claimed that between 400 and 1,000 civilians were killed.

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