PESHAWAR: A suicide car bomber struck near a busy livestock market on the outskirts of Pakistan’s Peshawar city on Sunday, killing 13 people including a former Taleban sympathizer turned anti-militant mayor, police said.
The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded 36 people on the outskirts of the northwest city, saying it was avenging Mayor Abdul Malik’s efforts to raise a militia to fight the rebels.
“The suicide bomber came in a car and exploded it when the mayor was standing with some visitors outside his guesthouse near the local livestock market,” district administration chief Sahibzada Anis told AFP.
Doctor Muslim Khan at Peshawar’s main Lady Reading hospital said that 13 people were killed and 36 wounded in the attack. Hospital officials said that two children were among the dead. “Abdul Malik and a commander of the local anti-Taleban force are also among the dead,” Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said. Malik, mayor of Adizai suburb on Peshawar’s outskirts, once had close links to the hard-line Taleban movement, but switched sides in 2008 and had raised a local force to battle the extremists on the fringes of the city.
The mayor had in the past survived a number of attempts on his life by his former allies, who are battling Pakistan’s government.
“We accept the responsibility for the Peshawar suicide attack,” TTP spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location. “Abdul Malik has met his fate, and if anybody else dares to raise a lashkar (militia) against us, he will be dealt (with) in same manner.” The attacker detonated 12 kg of explosives close to the market, littering the road with the corpses of cows and twisted metal from ruined vehicles, police and witnesses said.
Meanwhile, police in Islamabad shot dead a suicide bomber before he could attack a checkpoint.
