HEAVILY armed Islamic militants took more than 300 children hostage at a school in north-west Pakistan yesterday but freed them after tense negotiations with tribal elders, officials said.

Suicide bombers struck today in two areas of north-western Pakistan, killing up to 38 people, while Taliban militants broke a 10-month-old peace pact with the government along the frontier with Afghanistan.

Three blasts struck a military convoy in north-western Pakistan today, killing 14 people in an intensifying militant campaign of violence against the government in the restive border region, an army spokesman said.

Security forces clashed with Islamic students outside a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital Islamabad today, triggering gunfire that killed nine people, including four of the militant students, a senior official said.

Security forces clashed with militants outside a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital today, triggering gunfire that killed two police officers and one soldier.