Daily News Pakistan

PESHAWAR: A massive suicide car bomb Friday ripped through a market in Peshawar, a frequent target of Taliban and al-Qaeda attacks, leaving at least 45 people dead, sources and officials said.
The blast in a shopping area close to the northwestern city's main Khyber Bazaar also wounded more than 100 people, provincial health minister Zahir Ali Shah told reporters.
It was the sixth attack in the city in the past four months and follows the killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack in August, whose death the militants have repeatedly vowed to avenge.
‘At least 42 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the blast,’ Shah told reporters in the main Lady Reading Hospital.
Doctor Mehboob Ali at the hospital confirmed the toll and put the number of wounded at 103. The injured included women and children, he said.
More than 50 people were in serious condition, he said.
Police official Mohammad Karim estimated the size of the bomb at around 100 kilograms (220 pounds), while Shafqat Malik, chief of the bomb disposal squad, confirmed that a suicide attacker had detonated the bomb.
The device was planted in the door panels of the vehicle and included machinegun ammunition, designed to cause maximum casualties, Malik said.
‘The suicide attacker was sitting in the vehicle,’ he added.
Another police official, Nisar Marwat, said the death toll could rise, given that some of the wounded were in critical condition.
‘We have declared an emergency in the hospitals,’ Local administration chief Sahibzada Mohammad Anis told reporters.
Peshawar is the main city in the northwest and has been a frequent target of militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who are waging a violent insurgency against the Pakistani state.
On September 26 a car bomb killed six people on a road leading to the main army cantonment in Peshawar.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of bombings that have killed more than 2,100 people across the country over the past two years.
The government in Islamabad has vowed to wipe out militants from Pakistan's northwest. Last April, troops launched a blistering assault designed to dislodge Pakistani Taliban from the northwest Swat valley.
There has been an increase in US drone attacks on Pakistan's tribal belt recently, as the United States tries to stem the flow of militants waging an insurgency against about 100,000 foreign troops stationed across the border.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Monday on a UN compound in Islamabad that killed five aid workers and closed UN offices nationwide in the worst attack in the capital in months.