A suicide bomber blew himself up near a police checkpost in the northwestern Pakistani town of Bannu today killing three people, including a policeman, the military said.
Pakistan saw a wave of suicide bomb attacks after an army assault on a radical mosque in the capital last July, but there has been a lull since the formation in March of a new government that has called for talks to end the violence.
Today's attack, in which a bomber travelling in an auto-rickshaw taxi blew himself up as a policeman stopped him near a checkpost in the town in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), was the second since then.
"Three personnel embraced shahadat (martyrdom) including a policeman and two civilians," the military said in a statement.
Four people were wounded, it said.
The new government, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has begun talks with elders of ethnic Pashtun tribes along the Afghan border with whom militants have taken refuge.
The militants announced a ceasefire last month but later said they were rejecting negotiations mediated by the elders after the government refused to withdraw troops from their stronghold areas.
Also today, suspected militants shot dead two policemen outside a bank in the Swat Valley, in NWFP, in the second killing in two days in the region where the army has been battling militants since last year.
The valley was a main tourist destination until last year, when militants rallied to a radical cleric trying to impose Taliban-style rule and began attacking police.
The army launched an offensive in the valley in November and hundreds of people have been killed since then.
The government last month freed an influential pro-Taliban cleric, Sufi Mohammad, who is from the region and had been involved in insurgency in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the hope of ending the violence in Swat.
In a separate attack, a pro-government tribal leader in gas-rich Baluchistan province, in the southwest of the country, was killed in a roadside bomb blast, police said.
A spokesman for separatist rebels fighting for control of the province's resources, telephoned reporters to claim responsibility for the blast.