Peshawar: A car bomb suicide attack by the Taliban that targeted a senior military officer rocked Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding 24, officials said.
Broken glass and human remains littered the scene of the explosion near the city’s main railway station, where one SUV was blown to pieces while the wreck of another smouldered.
“It was a vehicle-borne suicide attack that killed three people including an FC [Frontier Corps] soldier,” senior local police official Najib-ur-Rehman told AFP, adding the two others were civilians including a woman.
A senior security official later told AFP a fourth person had died.
Fourteen injured people were being treated at the city’s Lady Reading Hospital and 10 at the Combined Military Hospital, officials said.
Senior police official Faisal Shahzad said the target of the bombing appeared to be Brigadier Khalid Javed, the second most senior officer in the FC force, who escaped unhurt.
The Pakistani Taliban faction led by Maulana Fazlullah claimed responsibility for the attack, vowing revenge against the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) for a military operation in the northwest.
Speaking to AFP by telephone, the group’s spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said: “We claim responsibility for the Peshawar attack on Tuesday. We have no loss from operation Zarb-e-Azab,” referring to the military strikes.
“We are still as active as the past and will show the mirror to the PML-N as we showed the ANP (Awami National Party).”
The secular ANP ruled the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from 2008-2013 and was regularly targeted by the Taliban who killed hundreds of its workers and some senior figures.
Mohammad Rizwan, a government employee who was passing on a motorbike when the blast occurred, told AFP from his hospital bed it was an deafening explosion.
“I fell from my motorbike after the blast and regained consciousness in the hospital,” said Rizwan, who sustained head and shoulder injuries.
Peshawar is the gateway to the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions where the military has been battling Taliban and Al Qaida-linked militants.
In the Boya area of North Waziristan Tuesday a roadside improvised explosive device went off as an army vehicle passed by, killing one soldier and wounding two others, a security official said.
The military began a long-awaited push to clear militant bases from North Waziristan in June after a bloody attack on Karachi airport finally sank faltering peace talks with Taliban rebels.
Air strikes, artillery, mortars and ground troops have all been used to retake territory there.
The tribal areas have for years been a hideout for Islamist militants of all stripes — including Al Qaida and the home-grown Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as well as foreign fighters such as Uzbeks and Uighurs.
Pakistan’s army says it has killed more than a thousand militants and lost 86 soldiers since the start of the current operation.
