12 KILLED, 30 WOUNDED IN PAKISTAN SUCIDE BLAST
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral near the northwestern city of Peshawar on Sunday, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 30 others, police and hospital officials said.The blast went off near a graveyard where people had just offered funeral prayers in the Badaber area on the outskirts of Peshawar, senior police officer Kalam Khan said.
"It was a suicide attack, we have found the head and legs of the bomber," he said. "The death toll is 12 now and the number of wounded is more than 30."
- Doctor Rahim Jan, a local hospital official, confirmed the toll.
- Peshawar police chief Imtiaz Altaf also said he believed it was a suicide bombing.
- Nobody claimed responsibility for the blast but Islamist militants have carried out several attacks in the area.
- The blast went off after mourners had offered prayers for a local woman.
- Police believe deputy speaker of the provincial assembly, Khushdil Khan, who was present at the funeral, could have been the target.
Khushdil Khan who belongs to the secular Awami National Party is on the hit list of the Pakistani Taliban militants, police officer Khan said."He was not hurt, he is safe," Khan added.
Peshawar has a population of 2.5 million people and has long been on the frontline of violence blamed on an insurgency led by Taliban militants opposed to Islamabad's alliance with the United States.
25 KILLED IN A SUCIDE BOMB EXPLOSION IN PAKISTAN
HANGU, Pakistan - A suicide bomber in a pickup truck detonated his explosives near several government offices in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 26 people, in the latest violence to hit the country since the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The officials raised the death toll as rescue operations continued in the area which was cordoned off by security forces. Police and media reports said a vehicle packed with explosive was used in the Hangu attack.- The driver steered the vehicle into a building in the area, the reports said. The reports quoted a senior police official as saying up to 450kg of explosives were used in the bombing.
- The explosion destroyed more than a dozen shops and damaged buildings in the area, police said.
- The attack in Hangu town in the southern part of Khyber Pakthunkhwa province came a day after a suicide bomber in an vehicle packed with explosives destroyed a police station building on Wednesday in the provincial capital, Peshawar, killing eight people and injuring 39.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for the Peshawar bombing as well as a number of previous attacks in the country which includes a further raid last weekend by militants on a naval airbase in the southern port city of Karachi in which 10 military personnel were killed and two surveillance aircraft destroyed.
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