The Pakistani military said it had bombed the hideout of a militant leader on Sunday, killing five insurgents, only a day after the Taliban declared a one-month cease-fire to pursue stalled peace talks with the government.

The target of the attack, Mullah Tamanchey, directed a deadly assault against a convoy carrying a polio vaccination team and security forces on Saturday in which 12 people were killed, the military said.

Hours after the attack on the convoy, the Taliban said they would observe a one-month cease-fire to try to revive peace talks that failed last month. It also called on other militant groups to observe the cease-fire.

A government negotiator told Reuters they were open to restarting peace talks as long as the Taliban and its affiliates honored the cease-fire.

Later Pakistan interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in a statement that the country was halting air strikes against Taliban militants in response to the cease-fire.

The Pakistani Taliban, an alliance of militant groups, says it is fighting to overthrow the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and replace it with a state ruled under strict Islamic law.

Sharif has been pursuing peace talks since he was elected in May. Soon after the talks finally began on February 6 the Taliban bombed a police bus in Karachi, killing 13 people.

The talks foundered days later when a Taliban faction claimed to have killed 23 paramilitary forces. The same night the military began bombing areas in the northwest that it said were militant hideouts.

Recently speculation has been mounting that the military would launch a ground operation in North Waziristan, a tribal region along the border with Afghanistan and stronghold for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Some analysts have speculated that the Taliban's offer of a cease-fire is aimed at stalling such an operation.

Reuters - AFP