10 killed in Pakistan suicide attack
Journalist among the dead in blast that also injured 36
PESHAWAR // At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle set off an explosion on the outskirts of the Pakistani city of Peshawar yesterday, in an attack claimed by the Taliban. The bomb exploded in the market beside a motorway jammed with traffic in the Wazir Dhand district just outside city limits.
The motorway links the Khyber tribal district and the northwestern city.
Four police and seven civilians, including two children, were among those killed, said police official Iqbal Khan.
A 36-year-old local journalist who was visiting a tribal police official – the bomber’s apparent target – also died in the market attack, said Shahab Ali Shah, a Khyber tribal district administration official.
Grief- stricken colleagues of the journalist, Mahboob Shah Afridi – who was president of the Tribal Union of Journalists in the neighbouring Khyber re- gion – comforted one another in the market after the attack.
Six of the 36 people injured in the blast were in serious condition, a hospital official said.
A local Pakistani Taliban commander, Maqbool Dawar, claimed responsibility for the attack saying it was in response to the killing of his comrades by security forces.
Peshawar is on the edge of Pakistan’s volatile tribal regions, a stronghold of the Taliban and other militants.
Ismatullah, a senior government official in the area, also confirmed the target had been a police official sitting in the market alongside the road. The blast damaged three shops, as well as cars and motorcycles on the road, he said.
Islamabad launched a military offensive in 2014 that has reportedly killed thousands of militants and pushed the rest over the border into Afghanistan, resulting in improved security inside Pakistan. Yet the Taliban have still managed to carry out major attacks, including an assault on a school in Peshawar in December 2014 that killed more than 150 people, mostly children.