Afghan mortars kill four Pak soldiers

Pakistani officials on Tuesday accused the Afghan army of firing mortar bombs across the border, killing four Pakistani soldiers and stepping up a recent surge of cross-border violence. The officials said two other soldiers were wounded in the attack in South Waziristan, part of the lawless tribal district on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan that Washington has called the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda. Afghan officials were not immediately reachable for comment. The deaths came with Afghan President Hamid Karzai due to host his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari in Kabul on Tuesday. "Four soldiers were killed and two others were wounded in this cross-border attack," a security official in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar told a foreign news agency, saying that the shelling continued for around two hours.