Pakistani police foil suicide attack

Pakistani police foiled a suicide attack Tuesday in the southwestern city of Quetta when they killed five militants laden with explosives.

Police stopped the three women and two men after they pulled up to a checkpoint, said Daud Junejo, police chief in Quetta, the capital of restive Balochistan province. The five threatened police, telling them they were suicide bombers.

They sped away, but police and federal paramilitary forces of the Frontier Corps chased and intercepted them at the next checkpoint. Police opened fire and killed all five, Junejo said.

The suicide bombers were carrying Russian passports with valid visas for Iran, said Col. Faisal Shehzad of the Frontier Corps. One member of the Frontier Corps was injured, Shehzad said.

Another Quetta police official with knowledge of the case told CNN that two of the attackers escaped.

Pakistan's Taliban has vowed to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden this month. Tuesday's foiled attack followed last week's suicide bombings on a military training facility in the nation's northwest. The Taliban claimed responsibility for those attacks, saying they were carried out in retaliation for bin Laden's killing.

The twin suicide bombings killed at least 80 people, nearly all of them military recruits who had just completed their training. About 140 others were wounded.