Car bomb kills 37 in north-west Pakistan

A car bomb exploded on a crowded street in north-western Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 37 people in the third blast to hit the troubled city of Peshawar in a week, officials said.

The latest explosion appeared to have been a bomb planted in a parked car and detonated by remote control, an official said. It went off in a crowded market — the city’s oldest bazaar — near a mosque and police station.

The blast damaged the mosque and nearby shops and caused many vehicles to go up in flames, a police officer said.

Such attacks in Peshawar, which is the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, have claimed over 130 lives since last Sunday when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of worshippers at a church, killing 85 people.

Then on Friday, 19 people died when a bomb planted on a bus carrying government employees home for the weekend exploded in the Peshawar outskirts.

The bomb that went off yesterday was some 300 metres from the All Saints Church, which was the scene of last Sunday’s carnage.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The Sunni militant group Jundullah claimed responsibility for the church attack, saying it targeted Christians to avenge the deaths of Muslims killed by United States drone strikes.

The new government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said it would like to negotiate with Pakistan’s largest militant group, the Taliban, to end the bloodshed, but so far those efforts have made little progress.

Also in north-western Pakistan, two missiles from an American drone hit a compound in North Waziristan yesterday, killing three militants affiliated with the Punjab province branch of the Pakistani Taliban, said two intelligence officers. AP