Pakistan Arrests 35 in U.S. Soldiers’ Deaths

Pakistani officials said Thursday they have arrested 35 suspects as part of their investigation into a bombing that killed three American soldiers and four Pakistanis on Wednesday in northwest Pakistan.

“They are all locals,” said the duty officer at the police station in the town of Balambat, where the bombing occurred, in the Lower Dir district.

The police made 30 arrests and five were made by members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, according to a senior official in the North-West Frontier Province.

“We are questioning them in an effort to trace those who orchestrated the suicide attack,” a police official, Naeem Khan, told The Associated Press. He added that police investigators believe the explosion was caused by a car bomber rather than a roadside bomb with a remote detonator.

Three of the Pakistani victims were schoolgirls, and two American soldiers also were wounded by the blast. The soldiers were part of a Special Operations team that has been training Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency techniques.