Tip saves minister

Police officers foiled a plan to assassinate a regional Education Minister in northwestern Pakistan when they engaged four militants in a gunbattle that ended with a teenage suicide bomber blowing himself up, police said.

An informant tipped off officers that insurgents had gathered in a Government high school after midnight and were planning to kill provincial Education Minister Sardar Hussain Babak and attack Government installations and security forces, police officer Noor Jamal Khan said.