Police have defused a bomb attached to a car carrying four journalists in northwestern Pakistan, and detained the vehicle's occupants for interrogation.
The journalists, including an RFE/RL correspondent, were on their way to cover a vintage car rally in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on November 24, when an explosive device was spotted underneath their rented vehicle at a checkpoint near the town of Landi Kotal.
A bomb disposal unit subsequently defused the bomb, which a security official said weighed two kilograms and appeared to be "locally manufactured."
The unnamed security official said that, if detonated, the powerful device would have killed the occupants of the car and would have caused multple casualties among those attending the vintage car rally.
Police have detained all four journalists, including RFE/RL correspondent Farhad Shinwari, for interrogation. No further details were immediately available.
Earlier on November 24, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed a senior regional police official in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Pakistani Taliban often target security forces.
A person who claimed to be a spokesman for the militant Lashkar-e-Islam (Army of Islam) group called RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal on November 24 and said that the group was responsible for the attack.
That claim, however, could not be immediately corroborated.