kaboom!near a busy hotel in Nowshera on Thursday, killing 11 people, wounding 14 and destroying the building.
The device went off in the evening as dozens of people were gathered after breaking the day's fast. Like the rest of the Mohammedan world, Pakistain is observing Ramazan, when the faithful fast from dawn to dusk.
The bomb was planted on a bicycle parked in the front courtyard of the hotel in Nowshera, police said.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
, told news hounds at the site that 11 people had been killed and 14 injured in the blast.
Hayatullah Khan, a police brass hat who was also at the chaotic scene, said that the dead included two army and one air force personnel.
"A woman and a child were also killed in the attack," he said. "It was a remote-controlled bomb. The officials of Bomb Disposal Squad are collecting more evidence."
Muhammad Hussain, a police brass hat in Nowshera, said, "The hotel was destroyed along with an adjacent hotel. Six nearby shops were badly damaged." The corpse count could rise as several people were critically maimed, the official said.
Last week, 51 people were killed when a jacket wallah went kaboom!" at a crowded mosque in Khyber tribal
district, in the deadliest attack for three months.US special forces killed al Qaeda chief the late Osama bin Laden
... who is no longer with us, and won't be again...
on May 2 in Abbottabad.
The northwest suffers from chronic insecurity largely connected to the semi-autonomous tribal belt near Afghanistan which Washington calls the most dangerous place on earth.
More than 4,550 people have been killed in suicide kabooms and bomb kabooms in Pakistain during the last four years, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other al Qaeda-linked bully boys. Soon after blast the officials of the law enforcing agencies and police reached the scene. The victims could not be immediately ascertained. They also rushed the injured to nearby District Headquarter Hospital Nowshera and Sheikh Maltoon Hospital, Mardan.
President
Asif Ali President Ten PercentZardari
... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ...
on Thursday strongly condemned the kaboom.
The president expressed his condolences with the families of those who bit the dust in the terrorist act.
He said the government and people were determined to defeat terrorism and such gruesome acts could deter the resolve of the nation to defeat terrorists. Zardari asked the law enforcement agencies to take measures to protect people from terrorist acts.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has also condemned the kaboom.
Expressing deep condolences with the bereaved families, the prime minister directed the law enforcement agencies to investigate the unfortunate incident and bring the perpetrators to justice. Gilani reiterated the government's resolve to stamp out the menace of militancy and terrorism from the country.