Bus terminal blast kills six in NW Pakistan

A bomb at a bus terminal in north-west Pakistan killed six people and wounded 11 others on Sunday, police said. The bomb was planted in a passenger vehicle at the terminal near a market in Matani, about 20 kilometres south of the provincial capital, Peshawar.

Reuters/Athar Hussain

The dead included three women and one child. The injured, including two women, had been rushed to the hospital in Peshawar where the condition of one woman was critical,

senior police officer Kalam Khan said.

"It appears to be a remote controlled bomb placed in a passenger vehicle waiting to leave for a rural area," Peshawar police chief Mohammad Ijaz said, adding that three other vehicles were also damaged.

He quoted witnesses as saying a man boarded the vehicle and then got off, leaving a package inside and telling people that he would be back soon.

Shortly afterwards a huge blast destroyed the vehicle. The casualties were mostly among the passengers, Ijiaz added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province lies next to tribal areas which border Afghanistan and serve as a base for Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters in that country. The Pakistani Taliban are active in the province itself and have sworn to avenge the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US commandos on 2 May.

The blast came after local officials had claimed a US drone strike likely killed Pakistan's Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri on Friday.

A senior Pakistani security official said there were "strong indications" that Kashmiri had been killed but that it was impossible to provide 100 per cent confirmation so soon after the attack without access to the bodies.