16 children, 1 teacher dead in Pakistan bus fire

Police say that a teacher was among the 17 burned to death in eastern Pakistan when a minibus taking children to school suddenly caught fire.

Police earlier said that all 17 who died in the Saturday morning blaze in Gujrat, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, were children aged between 6 and 12.

The accident comes after a pair of suspected militant attacks killed nine people in two different areas of northwest Pakistan on Friday.

In the deadlier of the two attacks, suspected militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a police convoy in Mattani, 12 miles south of the main northwest city of Peshawar, killing six policemen and wounding seven others, said senior police officer Shafiullah Khan.

In the second attack on Friday, a suicide bomber walked up to a vehicle owned by an Afghan religious leader in Peshawar and set off his explosives, killing three people, said police officer Riaz Ali Shah.

The leader, Haji Hayatullah, was not harmed in the attack because he was in a nearby mosque attending Friday prayers. Hayatullah's driver and guard were killed, said Shah.

A passerby was also killed and two others were wounded, said Peshawar police chief Liaquat Ali Khan.

There are more than 1 million refugees in Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.