Two persons, including a soldier, were killed and nine others wounded in a suicide blast in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, the military said on Thursday.

The blast took place in Miranshah town in North Waziristan.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in a statement said that a soldier and a civilian were killed in the blast.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the remote border area is a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban. With the Taliban taking control of neighbouring Afghanistan, incidents of terror have increased in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

This is the seventh such blast reported in the area in this year.?

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Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has strongly condemned the incident. Expressing his grief and sorrow over the lives lost in the incident, he said: “Those carrying out suicide attacks on Muslims cannot be Muslims."

(With inputs from PTI)