Teams of coordinated suicide attackers struck two police stations in north western Pakistan yesterday, killing a local police chief and wounding four officers in the latest assault on government officials, authorities said.

Elsewhere in the troubled north west, the Pakistani army said it had killed 30 militants in an airstrike in South Waziristan, a Taliban-dominated sanctuary near the Afghan border where the army launched a major offensive in October.

Police official Gul Zareen said the suicide attacks started within minutes of each other in the district of Mansehra. Local police chief Khalil Khan died and two officers and two passers-by were wounded when an attacker blew himself up inside the police station in Mansehra, he said.

In the second attack, a pair of attackers stormed another police station about 15 miles away in the town of Balakot, triggering a shootout that left one of the attackers dead.

Two officers were wounded in the Balakot shooting. Zareen said the slain attacker was wearing a suicide jacket.

The second attacker fled toward nearby offices, and officers were trying to track him down, he said.

Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, and Islamist militants allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban have stepped up attacks on police and security forces in recent years in addition to aiding attacks on Nato troops across the border in Afghanistan.

However, such assaults are rare in Mansehra, which lies in a "settled area" only about 90 miles north west of the capital, Islamabad. Pakistan dismantled militant training facilities there following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States.

Other large swathes of Pakistan's lawless north west near the Afghan border have been virtually taken over by faction of the Pakistani Taliban, including South Waziristan, where yesterday's airstrikes took place.

An army statement says it targeted a militant hide-out in the Shawal mountains of South Waziristan on a tip off that insurgents were hiding there.