Deadly suicide bombing outside court in Peshawar

At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a court in Peshawar in north western Pakistan.

AFP - A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Pakistan court on Thursday, killing 16 people and wounding 36 others in the latest attack to strike the northwest city of Peshawar, officials said.

The bomb exploded at the main gate of the building near the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel, where at least nine people were killed when attackers shot their way through a security checkpost and blew up a truck bomb in June.

Six suicide bombings in 11 days have now hit the sprawling city of 2.5 million people, which lies on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, where US officials say Al-Qaeda militants are plotting attacks on the West.

Attacks in the northwest have soared as 30,000 Pakistani troops press into Taliban strongholds in the hostile terrain near the border with Afghanistan, where 100,000 NATO and US troops are fighting a deadly insurgency.

Police and paramedics rushed to the scene of Thursday's attack, where a fork-lift vehicle towed away the mangled wreckage of a car and blackened debris scorched the main road outside the court building, television footage showed.

"It was a suicide blast. The attacker was on foot and was trying to enter the judicial complex. When the security personnel stopped him, he blew himself up," Sahib Zada Anis, head of the city's administration, told reporters.

"We have received 16 dead bodies and 36 injured. Six of them are critical," Lady Reading Hospital chief executive, Doctor Abdul Hameed Afridi, told AFP.

Police said the bomber blew himself up at the main gate of the judicial complex just as a van carrying prisoners was passing.

The attack came just three days after a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives, killing four people in a suburb as children were going to school, devastating a mosque, damaging a college and police station.

Anis told reporters that three policemen were among the dead.

Pakistan's security forces are on the front line of a deadly Al-Qaeda-linked campaign that has killed more than 2,530 people in 28 months in the nuclear-armed Muslim country and has recently increased in intensity.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's attack, but Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has vowed to attack in the cities to avenge a military assault on its South Waziristan stronghold, now into a fifth week.

The TTP claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed 15 people in Peshawar on Saturday and the bombing of the Peshawar headquarters of the nation's top intelligence agency, the ISI, on Friday that killed 17 people.

Date created : 2009-11-19