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PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A bomb killed seven Pakistani soldiers and wounded 11 others Saturday, officials said after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Al-Qaeda is at the core of the country’s terrorist threat.

“Seven paramilitary soldiers were killed and 11 were wounded in the remote-control bomb attack,” Shafirullah Khan, the top administrative official in the northwestern tribal district of Khyber, told AFP by telephone.

The Frontier Corps later issued a statement confirming that seven of its members had “embraced martyrdom”. It gave their names and said they died in an improvised explosive device blast.

Military and security officials in nearby Peshawar city said two vehicles carrying rations for Pakistani troops were destroyed in the explosion, which occurred about 15 kilometres (nine miles) west of Peshawar.

The military launched an offensive in Khyber, home to the Khyber pass into neighbouring Afghanistan, on September 1 after a suicide bomber blew himself up near a border post. That attack killed 22 policemen.

The semi-autonomous northwest tribal belt has become a stronghold for extremists who fled Afghanistan after a US-led invasion toppled the hardline Islamic Taliban regime there in late 2001.

Officials on Saturday blamed local militants for the attack on the soldiers. They were not specific but Lashkar-e-Islam is the main militant group fighting in that area.

The group has ties to the Pakistani Taliban headquartered further south in the semi-autonomous district of South Waziristan, where government forces on October 17 began a separate major offensive aimed at rooting out “terrorists”.

Around 30,000 troops are taking part in the South Waziristan campaign against an estimated 10,000-12,000 militants.

The military said Saturday that troops killed 33 insurgents but faced mortar fire and street battles as they pressed their offensive.

No information provided by the army can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers are barred from access to the area on the wild Afghan border.

The latest casualties reported bring to 297 the total number of insurgents reported killed since the operation started.

Relief workers say more than 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.

Numerous previous offensives in the tribal belt have had limited success, costing the lives of 2,000 troops and ending generally with peace agreements that critics say gave the insurgents a chance to re-arm.

At the end of a visit to Pakistan on Friday, Clinton hit out at Pakistan’s silence on the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda leaders.

“We don’t know where and I have no information that they know where but this is a big government. You know, it’s a government on many levels. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan must know where these people are,” Clinton said.

“And we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world,” she told radio journalists.

“I think it is absolutely clear and I am convinced that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of Al-Qaeda,” Clinton said.

Her visit was overshadowed by the country’s second-worst bomb attack.

Hopes of pulling more bodies from the scene of the Meena market car bombing all but disappeared on Saturday.

The top official in Peshawar said there was little chance of recovering the remains of 16 people listed as missing after Wednesday’s attack, in which 118 have been confirmed killed.

Still, relatives continued to shuttle between the hospital and the bomb site hoping to locate their loved ones.

“I know they are dead but can somebody tell me where I can find their bodies?” said Waqar Ahmad, weeping as he held photographs of his mother and father.

The attack underscored the gravity of Islamist attacks that have killed around 2,400 people in two years and are seen by most Pakistanis as part of a backlash against the government’s alliance with the United States.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A bomb killed seven Pakistani soldiers and wounded 11 others Saturday, officials said after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Al-Qaeda is at the core of the country’s terrorist threat.

“Seven paramilitary soldiers were killed and 11 were wounded in the remote-control bomb attack,” Shafirullah Khan, the top administrative official in the northwestern tribal district of Khyber, told AFP by telephone.

The Frontier Corps later issued a statement confirming that seven of its members had “embraced martyrdom”. It gave their names and said they died in an improvised explosive device blast.

Military and security officials in nearby Peshawar city said two vehicles carrying rations for Pakistani troops were destroyed in the explosion, which occurred about 15 kilometres (nine miles) west of Peshawar.

The military launched an offensive in Khyber, home to the Khyber pass into neighbouring Afghanistan, on September 1 after a suicide bomber blew himself up near a border post. That attack killed 22 policemen.

The semi-autonomous northwest tribal belt has become a stronghold for extremists who fled Afghanistan after a US-led invasion toppled the hardline Islamic Taliban regime there in late 2001.

Officials on Saturday blamed local militants for the attack on the soldiers. They were not specific but Lashkar-e-Islam is the main militant group fighting in that area.

The group has ties to the Pakistani Taliban headquartered further south in the semi-autonomous district of South Waziristan, where government forces on October 17 began a separate major offensive aimed at rooting out “terrorists”.

Around 30,000 troops are taking part in the South Waziristan campaign against an estimated 10,000-12,000 militants.

The military said Saturday that troops killed 33 insurgents but faced mortar fire and street battles as they pressed their offensive.

No information provided by the army can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers are barred from access to the area on the wild Afghan border.

The latest casualties reported bring to 297 the total number of insurgents reported killed since the operation started.

Relief workers say more than 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.

Numerous previous offensives in the tribal belt have had limited success, costing the lives of 2,000 troops and ending generally with peace agreements that critics say gave the insurgents a chance to re-arm.

At the end of a visit to Pakistan on Friday, Clinton hit out at Pakistan’s silence on the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda leaders.

“We don’t know where and I have no information that they know where but this is a big government. You know, it’s a government on many levels. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan must know where these people are,” Clinton said.

“And we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world,” she told radio journalists.

“I think it is absolutely clear and I am convinced that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of Al-Qaeda,” Clinton said.

Her visit was overshadowed by the country’s second-worst bomb attack.

Hopes of pulling more bodies from the scene of the Meena market car bombing all but disappeared on Saturday.

The top official in Peshawar said there was little chance of recovering the remains of 16 people listed as missing after Wednesday’s attack, in which 118 have been confirmed killed.

Still, relatives continued to shuttle between the hospital and the bomb site hoping to locate their loved ones.

“I know they are dead but can somebody tell me where I can find their bodies?” said Waqar Ahmad, weeping as he held photographs of his mother and father.

The attack underscored the gravity of Islamist attacks that have killed around 2,400 people in two years and are seen by most Pakistanis as part of a backlash against the government’s alliance with the United States.

Hundreds of pages of documents partially declassified by the Justice department on Friday reveal that the FBI was conducting an investigation of overseas CIA prisons.

The documents were released as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington-based advocacy group. Many of them were previously released but some of the censoring has been removed.

In September of 2002, FBI officials visiting an overseas prison run by the CIA found prisoners ‘manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock’, according to the documents.

Handwritten notes attributed to Justice Department officials discuss the possibility of prosecuting CIA employees. Senior FBI officials questioned the legality and effectiveness of the CIA’s interrogation methods and prison conditions. An interrogation involving threats with a gun and power drill was the focus of discussion in the notes, but Justice Department officials eventually declined to prosecute the CIA official.

A 2008 report details the FBI’s involvement with the interrogation of Ramzi bin al-Shiebh, one of the plotters behind 9/11. A sheet of questions were prepared for al-Shiebh with the help of the FBI, but the FBI officials “were denied direct access to him for four or five days.” When the FBI was permitted to see the detainee, he was found “naked and chained to the floor.” The FBI agent told the inspector general that he had “valuable actionable intelligence” but the CIA quickly shut down the interview, ruining the case.

Many of the pages of ‘declassified’ documents are heavily censored, due to DOJ restrictions.

Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School, has watched the document disclosures shift the focus of a potential investigation. “Disclosures increasingly put the core of potentially criminal conduct relating to torture not with CIA agents, but rather with senior figures then at the Justice Department who were busily hushing everything up.”

“The key questions here are which DOJ figures were involved in the decision not to prosecute and why did they take those decisions,” according to Horton.

The September 2002 overseas visit was the last involvement the FBI had with CIA interrogations, according to the New York Times.

Some of the declassified documents can be found here.

Hundreds of pages of documents partially declassified by the Justice department on Friday reveal that the FBI was conducting an investigation of overseas CIA prisons.

The documents were released as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington-based advocacy group. Many of them were previously released but some of the censoring has been removed.

In September of 2002, FBI officials visiting an overseas prison run by the CIA found prisoners ‘manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock’, according to the documents.

Handwritten notes attributed to Justice Department officials discuss the possibility of prosecuting CIA employees. Senior FBI officials questioned the legality and effectiveness of the CIA’s interrogation methods and prison conditions. An interrogation involving threats with a gun and power drill was the focus of discussion in the notes, but Justice Department officials eventually declined to prosecute the CIA official.

A 2008 report details the FBI’s involvement with the interrogation of Ramzi bin al-Shiebh, one of the plotters behind 9/11. A sheet of questions were prepared for al-Shiebh with the help of the FBI, but the FBI officials “were denied direct access to him for four or five days.” When the FBI was permitted to see the detainee, he was found “naked and chained to the floor.” The FBI agent told the inspector general that he had “valuable actionable intelligence” but the CIA quickly shut down the interview, ruining the case.

Many of the pages of ‘declassified’ documents are heavily censored, due to DOJ restrictions.

Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School, has watched the document disclosures shift the focus of a potential investigation. “Disclosures increasingly put the core of potentially criminal conduct relating to torture not with CIA agents, but rather with senior figures then at the Justice Department who were busily hushing everything up.”

“The key questions here are which DOJ figures were involved in the decision not to prosecute and why did they take those decisions,” according to Horton.

The September 2002 overseas visit was the last involvement the FBI had with CIA interrogations, according to the New York Times.

Some of the declassified documents can be found here.

Manufacturing delays in the H1N1 vaccine process have been frustrating America’s attempts to stay healthy. In an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon, Obama’s senior adviser admitted that White House estimates of available vaccines were based on bad information from the manufacturer.

Broadcasting this weekend on National Public Radio, Scott Simon reminded David Axelrod of promises made by the White House in August. “The Centers for Disease Control said that 120 million doses would be available. They later scaled that back to 45 million. We’re speaking today, on the last day of October, 25 million doses reportedly are ready. Did the government overpromise?”

Axelrod responded, “Well, I think the manufacturers overpromised, and what was reported was the representations that were made to us. The fact is that this is a problem that’s abating every day.” Flu experts disagree that the problem is “abating every day,” as this year’s influenza season has hardly begun.

In the United States, the flu season is generally considered between October and May with the peak of the season falling between late December and March. 114 children have been killed by the virus in the United States during a time when there is usually virtually no influenza, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Friday, President Obama expressed his own frustration with the lack of available vaccines. The original production estimate of 20 million doses per week has been pared down to 10 million.

GlaxoSmithKline, one of the five vaccine manufacturers, reported to Canadian health ministers that production of a special vaccine for pregnant women is slowing them down.

Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s secretary of Human Health Services, appeared on CNN this morning to discuss the H1N1 vaccine shortage. “Unfortunately, they[the five manufacturers] were overly optimistic and we gave those numbers to the American public.” Holmes asked Sebelius, “How much does this hurt the health of the country by being behind on these numbers?” Sebelius responded, “Well, we have a vaccine that works.”

The NPR radio broadcast with Scott Simon and David Axelrod can be heard here.

This video is from Saturday’s broadcast of CNN Newsroom with T.J. Holmes.