Pakistan bomb kills 105

PAKISTAN; Northwest Pakistan plunged into mourning on Thursday after one of the bloodiest attacks in the nation killed 105 people, eclipsing a peace mission by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The carnage caps a month of escalating bloodshed in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation where a full security alert was unable to stop a car laden with explosives blowing up a Peshawar market, pulling down buildings and slaughtering shoppers.Many of those killed in the city, which neighbours Pakistan's Al-Qaeda and Taliban-infested tribal belt on the Afghan border, were women and children.

There has been no claim of responsibility, but a barrage of recent attacks has forced Pakistan to press 30,000 troops into a ground offensive against homegrown Taliban fighters, AFP