Peshawar (Pakistan): A roadside bomb targeting a minivan in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region on Tuesday killed 14 people, a local official said, raising an earlier reported death toll of nine killed. The attack was claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction.

The blast ripped through the van travelling through a predominantly Shiite region of the Kurram tribal area, which borders Afghanistan, said Arif Khan, a tribal administration official in the town of Parachinar. The area has long been the scene of sectarian violence.

Shahid Ali Khan, a senior regional Pakistani official, said militants planted a roadside bomb in the Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

“When the passengers were coming, they detonated the remote-controlled bomb,” said Khan, who is the assistant political agent for Kurram Agency in FATA, which borders Afghanistan.

Five women and four children were among the 14 killed, while 10 people were wounded in the explosion. With few adequate medical facilities in the area, a Pakistani army helicopter evacuated the wounded to a nearby military hospital.

Jamat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway Taliban faction, said it was behind the attack on the Shiites.

Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups often target Shiites whom they consider to be heretics. The Daesh group has also claimed several recent attacks in the country.

For over a decade, Pakistan has been fighting militants who have killed tens of thousands of people. Islamabad has also undertaken several large-scale offensives in the tribal regions in an effort to rout militants from the area.

In the southern port city of Karachi, paramilitary forces raided an apartment following a tip that militants were hiding there, police officer Aurangzeb Khattak said.

After a seven-hour siege, three militants, including a woman, blew themselves up inside the apartment. The explosion also killed a 5-year-old while a fourth militant was killed trying to flee the scene.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office said the premier had “directed relevant authorities to extend maximum support for treatment of the injured”.

Parachinar and the surrounding area has suffered sectarian tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the past.

Several major attacks have rocked the Kurram Agency area this year, including a bomb blast at a mosque that killed more than 20 people in March in Parachinar.

In January, a bomb planted in a busy vegetable market also killed 21 people.

Both blasts were claimed by the Pakistani Taliban militant group.