Twenty-five people were killed in northwest Pakistan today in a surge of militant violence being linked to a commando assault on a radical mosque in the capital last week.
Also today, pro-Taliban militants in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border called off a 10-month peace deal with the government after accusing authorities of violating the pact.
At least 14 people including 11 security personnel were killed today in a series of bomb blasts and an exchange of fire with Islamist militants, the second major attack in the northwest in 24 hours.
The blasts hit as a convoy of police and paramilitary troops passed through the town of Matta near the hilly Swat area, well known as a stronghold of pro-Taliban militants.
"It appeared to be an ambush. There were three blasts of improvised explosive devices, followed by an exchange of fire," an intelligence official said.
Hours later, a suicide bomber targeted a police recruiting centre in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, in the same province, killing 14, most of them young men taking a police entrance exam, police spokesman Gul Afzal Afridi said.
"It was a suicide bombing and the attacker mingled among the scores of people gathered for the test and physical examination," Mr Afridi said.
More than 150 people were on the grounds of the police headquarters when the bomber struck. Some 30 people were wounded, some of them seriously, in the attack.
The latest violence came a day after a suicide bomber killed 18 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers and wounded 24 in the volatile North Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border.
Military spokesmen said that attack in North Waziristan might have been linked to last week's commando storming of a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad. The army said 75 people had been killed in the assault on the Lal Masjid mosque-religious school complex.
Pakistan's rugged northwest is a hotbed of al Qaeda and Taliban support, from where Taliban launch raids into Afghanistan, US military officers in Afghanistan say.
Security analysts have expressed fears of a militant backlash mainly in the conservative North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where pro-Taliban fighters were very active after the storming of the mosque.
Many of the militants who turned the Lal Masjid complex into a virtual fortress, and many of the religious students who studied there, were believed to have been from the NWFP.
This week's attacks on the security forces were the most serious since November when a suicide bomber killed 42 army recruits on a training ground in the northwestern town of Dargai.
The government has sent extra troops to at least four different parts of the province.
The Pakistani government struck a deal with tribal elders in North Waziristan last September aimed at isolating foreign militants. But the deal copllapsed today though it did not appear to be linked to the Lal Masjid assault.
Under the pact, authorities agreed to stop military operations against the militants in return for their pledge that they would not send fighters across the border into Afghanistan and would not launch attacks on security forces.
While US military officials in Afghanistan said the pact had not stopped insurgent raids into Afghanistan, it did lead to a sharp fall in attacks on Pakistani forces in North Waziristan.
A militant leadership council said it was abandoning the pact because security forces had launched several attacks on them and the government had deployed more troops in the region.