At least 17 killed in Pakistan suicide attack

Reuters/Rizwan Saeed

At least 17 people have been killed in a suicide attack on a market in Kohat, north-west Pakistan, on Wednesday, a senior police official said. The explosion took place at a busy bus terminal in the garrison town's main Tirah bazaar.

Twenty-five other people are reported to have been wounded, seven of them seriously.

Local police spokesperson Fazal Naeem said the bomber approached the door of a
bus carrying passengers to the nearby tribal district of Orakzai and detonated his explosives.

Television footage showed two damaged passenger vans parked at the terminal. Police say they have found the head and legs of the bomber.

The victims were both Sunni and Shia-Muslims.

The blast, the third in as many days, is part of a new wave of bombing after a brief lull.

After Monday’s blast in a tribal zone which killed 43, a suicide bomber on Tuesday tried to kill the chief minister of south-western province of Baluchistan, wounding nine, damaging his motorcade but leaving the minister unhurt, officials said.

A purported representative for the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group claimed responsibility, saying Raisani had been targeted for trying to provide security to Shia- Muslims from the frequent attacks they suffer in Baluchistan.

Around 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across the country since the military raid on the fundamentalist-run Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007.