Blast kills nine in Pakistan market
The bomb was planted in a car, devastating shops and vehicles as
civilians thronged the congested area at the start of the working day in
the northwestern city at the forefront of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked
attacks.
Peshawar runs into Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, which Washington
considers the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and where US drone strikes
target Islamist fighters active in the nine-year war in neighbouring
Afghanistan.
Pakistan suffers near-daily attacks blamed on Taliban and
Al-Qaeda-linked militants that have killed more than 4,000 people since
government troops evicted Islamists from an Islamabad mosque in a deadly
July 2007 siege.
“It was a timed bomb. The target was police. He parked the car here
due to the rush,” senior police official Mohammad Ijaz Khan told
reporters.
Peshawar’s main Lady Reading Hospital said it had received nine dead
after the attack, including three children and one woman.
“Children and women are among the injured as well,” hospital chief
Abdul Hamid Afridi told AFP.
Peshawar city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan confirmed the toll and
said more than 20 people were wounded. An AFP reporter saw 23 patients
being treated in hospital, including six children aged four to 12.
Housewife Asmara Bibi was sitting in the back of a Datsun pick-up en
route to a nearby village to visit relatives when the bomb exploded.
“A wave of flames hit me. It was so powerful, I thought I was in a
furnace. My burqa also caught fire and I threw it away,” she said. \
“My kids were also burnt and I cried for them. After that I don’t
remember what happened.
PESHAWAR, Wednesday, AFP
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