3 suspected terrorists die in Pakistan

Three Islamic militants died in eastern Pakistan on Saturday when a powerful bomb they were carrying on a bicycle accidentally exploded, police said.

The men were apparently targeting the funeral services for a policeman or the police guarding a cattle market in Cheecha Watni, a town about 60 miles east of Multan, a city in Punjab province, authorities said.

Initially area police chief Mohammed Bashir said the blast injured one passer-by, but later said that person was also on the bicycle and had died. Police collected the suspects' remains for DNA testing, he said.

Mohammed Shakil, a police inspector on the scene, told The Associated Press that one of the men had strapped explosives to his body and exploded it prematurely, killing himself and two of his associates.

Some police officers were present at a nearby house to attend the funeral service for a police inspector who died in a shootout with the terror suspects, he said.

Shakil said the slain men were students of a local seminary, and had links with Sipah-e-Sahaba, a Sunni militant group outlawed by the government in 2001 to purge the country of extremism. He provided no further details.

Mohammed Ali, another area police officer, said officers had still not reached any conclusions about the suspects' target, but apparently police guarding the market or officers attending the funeral service were to be attacked.

Militants have vowed to avenge the killing of their comrades by Pakistani forces in the country's deeply conservative tribal areas, where Pakistan has deployed about 80,000 soldiers to flush out Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Police and security agencies have been on maximum alert following the Jan. 26 suicide attack outside a five star hotel in Islamabad that killed a guard.

A suicide bomber killed 15 people _ including a judge _ when he blew himself up inside a courtroom in a southwestern city of Quetta on Feb. 17.