[Emirates 24/7] At least 17 people were killed in a suicide kaboom on a market in the northwestern Pakistain of Kohat on Wednesday, a senior police official said.The kaboom took place at a busy bus terminal in the garrison town's main Tirah bazaar, Kohat police chief Dilawar Bangash told AFP.
"It was a suicide blast. The corpse count has risen to 17," he said, adding that 25 others were maimed, seven of them seriously.
It is the latest bombing in a long series of attacks in Pakistain blamed on networks linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Local police front man 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. A woman was crying while people tried to console her. Earlier it appeared the bomb was planted in a vehicle parked at the main bus stand, but Bangash said that "now we have found the head and legs of the jacket wallah".
Bangash said it was not immediately clear who was the target. The victims were both Sunni and Shiite Mohammedans, he said.
The blast, the third in as many days, is part of a new wave of bombing after a brief lull.
A double suicide kaboom in the tribal district of Mohmand near the Afghan border killed 43 people on Monday.
Police said two jacket wallahs dressed in police uniform attacked a meeting of anti-Taliban faceless myrmidons and pro-government elders in Ghalanai, about 175 kilometres northwest of Islamabad.
A purported front man for the Pak Taliban grabbed credit for that attack, threatening death to anyone who forms militias against the Islamists.
On Tuesday a jacket wallah tried to kill the chief minister of Pakistain's southwestern province of Baluchistan, damaging his motorcade but leaving the minister unhurt, officials said.
The blast maimed nine people near the convoy of Nawab Aslam Raisani in Quetta, the capital of a province where separatist, sectarian and Taliban violence has surged this year.
A purported front man for the banned bad boy group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
grabbed credit, saying Raisani had been targeted for efforts to provide security to Shiite Mohammedans, who are frequently attacked in Baluchistan.
Around 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistain since government forces raided an bad boy mosque in Islamabad in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on networks linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.