Two USAID officials were killed and two others,including a tehsildar, sustained injures when an IED went off in Ambar

Two USAID officials were killed and two others, including a tehsildar, sustained injures when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off in Ambar tehsil of Mohmand Agency on Tuesday, official sources said.

According to the political administration officials, tehsildar Faramosh Khan was on an anti-poppy drive in Ambar tehsil area along with Anti-Narcotics Force officials and USAID campaigners when an IED device planted on the roadside exploded.

As a result of the explosion, the USAID campaigners were killed while tehsildar Faramosh and an ANF official sustained injuries.

The injured were shifted to Ghalanai District Headquarters hospital for treatment.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

Kerry mourns the loss

US Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience at the State Department that he had awakened to news that two Pakistani employees of the US consulate have been killed when an improvised explosive device detonated while they were on a mission to eradicate drug fields.

Kerry says the Pakistani troops were guarding the mission. He lamented the deaths as senseless and denounced the perpetrators.

Mohmand is one of Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies near the Afghan border where the military has been battling Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants for over a decade.A faction of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility on Wednesday for a roadside bombing that killed two Pakistani employees of a US consulate.

The Jamaat-ur-Ahrar said it detonated the remote-controlled explosive device on Tuesday in FATA’s Mohmand about 170 km (105 miles) from Islamabad.

“Jamaat-ur-Ahrar’s mujahideen carried out a remote-controlled bomb attack that sent a FATA secretariat employee and his driver to hell,” said a statement emailed to Reuters.

Faisal Khan and Abid Shah were killed while on a drug eradication mission, the US State Department said.

Khan was identified by US authorities as the most senior Pakistani employee at the US Consulate in Peshawar. Shah was identified as the driver, having joined the consulate in 2009 as a security specialist.

Four other Pakistanis were wounded in the blast, the Taliban said.

Pakistan’s volatile tribal areas have been home to an insurgency by Islamist militants under the banner of TTP since 2007.

The tribal areas, including Mohmand, have seen multiple rounds of military operations reduce the TTP’s capacity, but targeted attacks against state and civilian targets are common.

Mohmand has seen increasing violence in recent weeks. On February 18, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar gunmen killed nine Pakistani paramilitary soldiers in two separate attacks.