PESHAWAR: A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle along a road near a well-known market in Pakistan's northwest city of Peshawar on Friday, killing 41 people.
The attack in the Khyber Bazaar area came as Pakistan's army prepares for another major operation in the al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan tribal region. The militants have threatened bombings if the army doesn't back off.
Television footage showed the charred skeleton of a bus flipped on its side in the middle of a major road. Twisted remains of a motorbike lay alongside the bus. A nearby vehicle was in flames.
Noor Alam saw the vehicle explode, and suffered wounds on his legs and face.
‘I saw a blood soaked leg landing close to me,’ Alam told The Associated Press at the overwhelmed Lady Reading hospital. ‘I understood for the first time in my life what a doomsday would look like.’
Peshawar Police Chief Liaqat Ali Khan said the attacker was in a car packed with ‘a huge quantity of explosives and artillery rounds.’
A minibus apparently carrying passengers nearby was also levelled in the blast.
It came days after a suicide attack killed five at a UN office in the capital, Islamabad and two weeks after another explosion killed 11 in a Peshawar commercial area.
It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since a suicide bomber demolished a packed mosque near the northwestern town of Jamrud in March, killing about 50.
Provincial Health Minister Syed Zahir Ali Shah said 41 people were killed and more than 100 wounded Friday.
‘Death has to come one day, but we will keep chasing these terrorists, and this attack cannot deter our resolve,’ Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said as he visited the bloody scene.
Also Friday, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said a suspect had been arrested in Monday's suicide attack at the office of the UN's World Food Program in Islamabad.
Malik says the man was alleged to have given the attacker shelter, but gave few details.
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