Islamabad - A pair of suicide bombings left 16 people, including nine paramilitary soldiers, dead across Pakistan Saturday.

At least eight members of Pakistan's security forces were killed and four others were injured in a suicide bombing at a paramilitary camp in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

The blast occurred in the upmarket residential area of F-7/3, where paramilitary troops from the Frontier Corps (FC) were deployed to guard several embassies, UN offices and diplomatic residences in the area.

"It was carried out by a lone suicide bomber. Eight people, all of them from FC, are killed, while four are injured. No one is missing," Bin Yamin, Islamabad's Deputy Inspector General of Police Investigation, told reporters at the scene.

"We have recovered the legs of the attacker and are looking for his head," he said, adding that seven to eight kilograms of explosives were used in the blast.

The suicide bomber struck the FC barracks when the soldiers were having their evening meal.

Pakistan's top security official, Rehman Malik, said militants had launched a "new wave of attacks" on Pakistan.

Pakistan saw dozens of suicide attacks in 2007 and early 2008 that left thousands of people dead, as Pakistan intensified its campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants launching cross-border attacks from the country's tribal belt against US-led international forces in Afghanistan.

Those decreased, though did not fully stop, when the government offered peace talks to Taliban in March.

The fresh wave of strikes comes in the wake of statements from the US administration demanding stern action against tribal militants.

Hundreds of kilometres west of Islamabad, in the country's lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan, a car suicide bomber killed eight people during a foiled suicide bombing on security forces.

The car bomber, apparently pursuing a paramilitary convoy, set off the explosives as the vehicles reached a checkpoint point on the outskirts of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal district.

"Seven civilians, including two schoolchildren, were killed in the suicide attack," said a local security official.

More than 30 people and six Frontier Corps paramilitary soldiers were also wounded in the attack. One soldier died later in the hospital.

"The bomber failed to directly hit his target because the troops have opened fire on the explosive-laden vehicle to immobilize it," the official explained.

Another official earlier put the toll in the car bombing at 17.

President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the terrorist attacks and vowed that his government would root out terrorism.

The botched suicide attack in the north-west came hours after a pre-dawn US airstrike on a militant hideout in the same region killed at least 13 people and injured eight others.

Missiles believed to have been fired by a US Predator drone struck the house of a local Taliban commander, Tariq Khan, in Dandai village of the North Waziristan's Datta Khel sub-district at around 3 am Saturday (2200 GMT Friday).

"Thirteen people were killed, including some foreigners," an intelligence official said in an apparent reference to al-Qaeda or Taliban militants of Arab or Central Asian origin.

However, Malik Mumtaz, a tribal elder, told the German Press Agency dpa by telephone that three women and four children were among the dead.

Government administrators in Miranshah confirmed the attack, but did not give details about the identities of those killed in the strike.

US forces in Afghanistan have carried over three dozen drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal belt since August 2008, killing more than 300 people, including some mid-level al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Islamabad has protested against the drone attacks, saying these were proving counter-productive because of collateral damage and public anger against violations of Pakistan's sovereignty.

But US officials say the war in Afghanistan cannot be won without eliminating the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan's seven lawless districts, which serve as sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, who fled Afghanistan following the US invasion in 2001. (dpa)