Peshawar, Pakistan:  November 20, 2009 - IR Summary/Agencies - 

A suicide bomber struck outside a Pakistan court, killing 16 people on Thursday in the sixth attack on the northwestern city in 11 days as troops press a major anti-Taliban offensive.

The bomb exploded at the main gate of the building near the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel, where at least nine people were killed when attackers shot their way through a security check post and blew up a truck bomb in June.

Thursday's attack showed that militants can attack at will in the city of 2.5 million people, which lies on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, where US officials say al-Qaida militants are plotting attacks on the West.

Attacks in the northwest have soared as 30,000 Pakistani troops press into Taliban stranglehold in the hostile terrain near the border with Afghanistan, where 100,000 NATO and US troops are fighting a deadly insurgency.

Paramedics ferried the wounded from outside the court building, where a fork-lift vehicle towed away the mangled wreckage of a car and blackened debris scorched the main road outside the court building, television footage showed.

"It was a suicide blast. The attacker was on foot and was trying to enter the judicial complex. When the security personnel stopped him, he blew himself up," Sahib Zada Anis, head of the city's administration, told reporters.

"A total of 16 people died and 36 have been wounded, six of them in a critical condition," said Anis at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital.

Police said the bomber blew him up at the main gate of the judicial complex just as a van carrying prisoners was passing. Three police officers were killed.

"We are alert and are ready to sacrifice our lives to save the common people," Nisar Marwat, senior police official told reporters.

Pakistan's security forces are on the front line of a deadly Al-Qaeda-linked campaign that has killed more than 2,550 people in 29 months in the nuclear-armed Muslim country and has recently increased in intensity.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's attack but Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has vowed to attack cities to avenge a military assault on its South Waziristan stronghold, now into its fifth week.

US President Barack Obama has reportedly increased pressure on Pakistan to fight, not just those the government recognises as an internal threat, but Taliban and al-Qaida militants fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan.

US missiles fired from an unmanned drone overnight killed at least four militants in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said.

The US military does not as a rule confirm drone attacks, which US officials say have killed a number of top-level militants and Islamabad publicly opposes as a violation of its sovereignty, fanning anti-Americanism here.

Pakistan launched its most ambitious offensive to date against TTP on October 17, sending troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships into battle in the mountains of South Waziristan.

The United Nations says 268,000 people have been displaced. That number is more than half the estimated population of South Waziristan with extensive battle damage raising questions about how they will rebuild their lives.

South Waziristan -- like most of the tribal belt on the Afghan border -- is closed to independent travel for reporters and to aid workers, allowing scope for the military and the Taliban to make conflicting claims in the media.

The Taliban hit back on Wednesday at claims that towns had fallen to army control, vowing their guerrilla war would defeat the military.