PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A suicide bomber yesterday blew up a car at a crowded market in a northwestern Pakistani tribal town, killing at least 16 people and wounding 30 others, officials said.
The blast ripped through the main market in Darra Adam Khel near to a local anti-insurgent peace committee office, which officials said was the target of the attack.
“The death toll has risen to 16 and 30 others were wounded,” local government official Fakhar-ud-Din told AFP.
He said it was not immediately clear how many peace committee members were killed or wounded because the bombing occurred in a crowded street and many shoppers were victims.
Information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province Mian Iftikhar Hussain said: “It was a suicide attack and the target was the local peace committee.”
Two other officials confirmed the bombing and the death toll and said some of the wounded were shifted to other cities for treatment as local health facilities were not sufficient.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the officials said.
The peace committee comprised a breakaway group of former militants who ditched their Taleban colleagues and formed a militia supporting local elders and government efforts against militancy, a local intelligence official said.
Semi-autonomous Darra Adam Khel lies between the northwestern towns of Peshawar and Kohat and has experienced several suicide attacks and bombings blamed on Taleban militants.
Separately, a Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taleban remained on a ventilator in hospital yesterday, as people continued to pray for her recovery, the military said.
The shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for the right to an education, has been denounced worldwide and by the Pakistani authorities, who have offered a reward of more than $100,000 for the capture of her attackers.
“(The) health condition of Malala continues to remain satisfactory. Her vitals are okay and she is still on ventilator,” the military said in an update.
“A board of doctors is continuously monitoring her condition,” it added. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf visited Malala on Friday, paying tribute to her and two friends who were also wounded when a gunman boarded their school bus on Tuesday and opened fire.
“It was not a crime against an individual but a crime against humanity and an attack on our national and social values,” he told reporters, pledging renewed vigor in Pakistan’s struggle with Islamist militancy.
Military spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa Friday said the next 36 to 48 hours would be critical for Malala.
The attack has sickened Pakistan, where Malala won international prominence with a blog for the BBC that highlighted atrocities under the Taleban who terrorized the Swat valley from 2007 until a 2009 army offensive.
Activists say the shooting should be a wake-up call to whose who advocate appeasement with the Taleban, but analysts suspect there will be no seismic shift in a country that has sponsored radical Islam for decades.
Schools opened with prayers for Malala on Friday and special prayers were held at mosques across the country for her speedy recovery at the country’s top military hospital in the city of Rawalpindi.
