Deadly car bomb blast hits busy market town

A car bomb exploded in a busy market in the central Pakistani town of Dera Ghazi Khan, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens.

AFP- A suicide car bombing in a busy market in central Pakistan on Tuesday killed at least 27 people, the latest in a stream of deadly attacks to hit the country, a senior official said.

The bombing in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan came as Pakistan battles Islamist fighters and follows on the heels of a visit by top US military commander General David Petraeus.

"The latest toll is 27 dead and 53 injured," the town's commissioner Hassan Iqbal told AFP. "It was a suicide attack," he said.

He said 46 people were in the local hospital while seven critically wounded had been shifted to the hospital in the nearby city of Multan.

"It was an explosive-laden vehicle which the bomber used in the attack," Iqbal said. "We have recovered body parts of the bomber including a hand and a foot from the car," he said.

"The rescue work is over now, debris has been removed," he said.

Iqbal earlier told AFP there were many people trapped in the rubble after the powerful blast demolished around 10 shops.

"It was a terrorist activity, similar to those being carried out in other parts of the country."

The state-run hospital in the small town was ill-equipped to cope with heavy casualties and Iqbal said special arrangements had been made for the supply of medicines.

A helicopter was used to ferry the seriously wounded to Multan hospital.

Local police chief Mubarak Ali earlier told reporters "it was a powerful car bomb blast, it ripped through the Khosa Market, which is the busiest shopping centre in the town.

"Several shops were destroyed and a mosque was also badly damaged."

Witnesses said the roofs of several shops caved in and dust and smoke engulfed the site after the blast, which left a big crater in the ground. Local people rushed to join the rescue work while cranes removed the debris to retrieve any casualties.

The blast also damaged nearby buildings and glass shards littered the ground.

The attack damaged the house of an adviser to the Punjab provincial government, Zulfikar Khosa.

"There was no family member in the house," Khosa told reporters.

Pakistan's military is engaged in offensives against Islamist fighters across much of the northwest including the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a region branded by Washington as the most dangerous place in the world.

About 30,000 troops poured into South Waziristan in mid-October to try to dismantle the strongholds of the Taliban leadership, enraging militants who have responded with a surge in attacks.

The US administration is pressuring Islamabad to do more to tackle Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants who cross over into Afghanistan, but Pakistan is also battling a surging homegrown insurgency that has killed more than 2,700 people in the last two and a half years.

The latest strike came a week after two suicide attackers firing rockets and guns last Tuesday drove up to the offices of Pakistan's main intelligence agency in Multan, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Dera Ghazi Khan before detonating their car bomb and killing 10 people.

Earlier twin suicide blasts killed 51 people in a busy market in the eastern city of Lahore on December 7.

The two explosions hit within seconds of each other as shoppers and diners packed the popular Moon Market with government officials blaming Taliban fighters avenging the military operations against them.

Pakistani troops continuing a search operation in South Waziristan destroyed 22 militant compounds including two tunnels, the military said on Tuesday.

Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, told reporters during his visit that Pakistan needed to put pressure on the Taliban leadership operating inside its borders if long-term progress was to be made in Afghanistan.

Date created : 2009-12-15