Pakistan market blast kills 25: officials

CHARSADDA, Pakistan (AFP) – A suicide car bomb ripped through a packed shopping street in a small Pakistan market town on Tuesday, killing at least 25 people in the third militant attack in northwest in as many days.

The vehicle rigged with explosives blew up in the heart of Charsadda on a road lined with fruit and juice shops, ripping off shop roofs and littering the ground with slippers, human flesh and broken push carts, witnesses said.

"It was a terrible scene. There were injured and wounded everywhere," one witness told reporters. "I joined the relief and rescue operation and myself removed about a dozen casualties."

Frightened people gazed at the wreckage as the force of the blast tossed signboards and hoardings and damaged cars during the afternoon shopping rush in the town's most popular market, television footage showed.

"We have at present 25 dead. Six of them are children and three are women," Doctor Zulfiqar Ahmad told AFP at the main hospital where anguished relatives were sobbing in Charsadda, just outside the northwestern city of Peshawar.

"There are 42 wounded people," he said. Six seriously wounded were taken to Peshawar, on the edge of Pakistan's tribal belt that US officials call the most dangerous place on Earth and a chief Al-Qaeda sanctuary.

The United States has put Pakistan on the frontline of its war against Al-Qaeda, increasingly disturbed by deteriorating security in the country where suicide attacks and bombings have killed around 2,500 people in 28 months.

The government blames most of the attacks on the home-grown Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has vowed to avenge an offensive against its strongholds and the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud by a US missile in August.

A senior police official in the district confirmed the death toll was 25 and that all the victims were civilians who had been in the area was so crowded when the bomber unleashed mayhem at around 4:15 pm (1115 GMT).

"It was a suicide car bomb blast. Twenty-five people died and more than 40 were injured -- all of them are civilians," senior police official Liaquat Ali told AFP at the bomb site.

"This is a busy area. It is usually crowded in the evening time. It took place in the main bazaar," said district police chief Mohammad Riaz Khan.

It was the third suicide bombing in three days in northwest towns near Pakistan's tribal badlands on the Afghan border where the military is pressing a major offensive into a fourth week against TTP hideouts.

Since around 30,000 troops went into battle in a three-pronged ground and air assault against around 10,000 fighters in South Waziristan on October 17, attacks and bombings have killed more than 200 people.

Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location on Tuesday that the militia would continue to attack towns.

"The attacks in cities are a part of our permanent strategy. These attacks will continue and we will attack everyone who wants to harm us," he said.

He claimed the militia was waging a guerilla war from the mountains of South Waziristan, hitting back at suggestions that they were being overrun or where merely escaping into nearby districts North Waziristan and Orakzai.

"We have started a guerilla war in different parts of Waziristan and the Pakistan army has received heavy losses," said Tariq, rubbishing military projections that combat would only take six to eight weeks.

"We will prove that we can fight for years. The government cannot take Waziristan in three months, even in six months. It will take years and years to take control of Waziristan," Tariq said.

Pakistan's military said Tuesday that troops had uncovered a private Taliban jail, destroying a network of rebel caves, bunkers and towers while nine militants were killed during the last 24 hours of operations.

No details from the army can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers barred from the area.

The military says around 495 militants have been killed and 46 soldiers have died, a fraction of the number lost in past campaigns that ended in controversial peace deals that critics said allowed the militants to re-arm.