A bomb blast in Pakistan claimed by the Taliban has killed eight people, including three US soldiers and children at the opening of a school just rebuilt after an Islamist attack.
The US soldiers, whom the embassy said were training paramilitary troops, were travelling in a convoy with local troops, journalists and officials to the opening of the girls' school on Wednesday when the roadside bomb exploded.
It appears to be the first time US soldiers have been killed in such an incident in Pakistan, a key ally on the frontline of the war on al-Qaeda where Islamist militants have killed around 3,000 people since July 2007.
The US embassy condemned the "vicious terrorist bombing" which killed three Americans and wounded two others in northwest district of Lower Dir, where Pakistan last year launched an assault to drive out Taliban militants.
"The Americans were US military personnel in Pakistan to conduct training at the invitation of the Pakistan Frontier Corps," it added.
"They were in Lower Dir to attend the inauguration ceremony of a school for girls that had recently been renovated with US humanitarian assistance."
Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas confirmed to AFP that the US soldiers were in Pakistan to train the Frontier Corps.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bomb and alleged that the dead Americans belonged to US security company Blackwater Worldwide - now known as Xe - which has earned global notoriety over its activities in Iraq.
"We claim responsibility for the blast," Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq said in the call from an undisclosed location.
"The Americans killed were members of the Blackwater group. We know they are responsible for bomb blasts in Peshawar and other Pakistani cities."
Islamist networks in Pakistan routinely blame bomb attacks, which the authorities say were carried out by Taliban-linked factions, on Americans.
Pakistani officials said a Frontier Corps soldier and four schoolgirls also died in the attack in Koto village.
"We have four dead bodies. They are schoolgirls aged 10 to 15. We have received 65 injured, most of them are girls," said Mohammad Wakeel, chief doctor at the local hospital in Taimargara, the main town in Lower Dir.
The same school was blown up in January 2009 and rebuilt with the help of a foreign aid organisation, believed by police to have been the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Western groups have been working with the Pakistani government to promote girls' education in parts of the northwest, where Taliban-linked militants opposed to co-education have destroyed hundreds of schools.
USAID last week published a report warning that a project intended to improve governance in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, which borders Lower Dir, had achieved little over the last three years.
US officials call Pakistan's tribal belt the most dangerous place on Earth, rife with both homegrown Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters and other Islamist militant groups which fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Late on Tuesday, up to 10 unmanned US drone aircraft launched about 18 missiles on hideouts and training camps in five isolated settlements of the Dattakhel area in tribal North Waziristan, killing 31 people, mostly Islamist militants.
North Waziristan borders Afghanistan and is infested with Taliban insurgents, al-Qaeda operatives and fighters with the Haqqani militant network.
"Thirty-one people, mostly militants, were killed," a senior security official told AFP, which another official said was the heaviest strike yet.
Drone attacks have soared since US President Barack Obama made defeating al-Qaeda and ending the war in Afghanistan a key plank of his foreign policy.
Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud has been a target of the drone attacks. A number of reports say that he died of injuries sustained in a January strike on North Waziristan, but the Taliban deny that he is dead.
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