Islamabad  - Gunmen attacked a minivan transporting children to school in Pakistan's troubled North West Frontier Province on Friday, killing its driver and leaving two students wounded, police said.

Five other students were kidnapped by the attackers who ambushed the vehicle on the periphery of Hangu, a remote town adjoining the lawless tribal region along the Afghan border.

"The driver was fatally shot while two students also received bullet injuries but they survived," police officer Ashfaq Khan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the phone.

Islamabad  - In a first major indication of a thaw in recent tension between Pakistan and India, top diplomats of the nuclear- armed neighbours had a first meeting Thursday - in Colombo, Sri Lanka - since the Mumbai terror attack last year.

The development came ahead of the next week's regional visit of chief of US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who will help the two countries in the Mumbai probe.

Islamabad  - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on thursday offered cash-strapped Pakistan to double its annual assistance to three billion dollars during the incoming fiscal year staring on July 1, a senior official of the bank said.

"We can double Pakistan's assistance up to three billion per annum provided Islamabad makes a request and the funds available to ADB are increased," the bank's vice president Zhao Xiaoyu told reporters in Islamabad.

Islamabad - An accidental fire engulfed the luxury Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Thursday, five months after at least 54 people were killed there in a devastating suicide truck bombing.

The blaze erupted on the mezzanine floor of the five-storey building where labourers were renovating the suites.

"Preliminary findings and eyewitness accounts reveal that the fire was caused by a short circuit," Islamabad's chief commissioner Kamran Lashari told reporters.

Islamabad - Police Thursday used teargas and baton-charged supporters of Pakistan's largest opposition party in a second day of protests over a court ruling that put an election ban on its leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Violence broke out in Islamabad where angry protesters pelted police with stones and set ablaze six vehicles, including a police van, along the highway linking the capital with the rest of the country. "Several" people were injured, police said.

Islamabad, Feb. 26 : Legal experts have warned that the Supreme Court's order to ban the Sharif's -Nawaz and Shahbaz from contesting elections, will precipitate a major political crisis in Pakistan.

But they also said that the ruling was as per law.

"The courts in the country were independent and the SC verdict that disqualified the Sharif brothers was in accordance with the law," The Daily Times quoted Barrister Ahmad Raza Qasuri, as saying.

Qasuri expressed his lament over court verdict being viewed as a 'biased' one.

Senior lawyers Khalid Ranjha and SM Zafar also that the verdict could create a difficult political situation in the country