At least 24 people were killed and more than 50 injured Saturday morning when a bomb exploded in a busy outdoor vegetable market in a remote tribal town near the Afghan border, security and tribal officials said.
The explosion occurred early morning around 8:50 AM at the city’s Eidgah market, where a large number of people were shopping for fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile, the Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s media wing, said that the blast was carried out by an improvised explosive device (IED).
“The bomb was planted either in a fruit or vegetable crate in Kohat as local merchants brought these items from the main market in Kohat,”
-MNA Sajid Hussain Tori told The News on the telephone from Parachinar.
He said besides shopkeepers and vendors, a large number of tribesmen daily visited the market for buying vegetables and fruit. This was reportedly the third terrorist strike in the market in the recent past.
Kurram has been the scene of increased militant activities in recent years and the army carried out a massive operation against extremists in the region but they still have the capacity to strike.
Some of the wounded were airlifted to hospitals in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Hospitals in tribal regions and rural areas of Pakistan typically are not equipped to handle such emergencies.
The banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack. The interior minister Chaudhry Nisar has demanded an inquiry report over the incident.
