Two bombs exploded yesterday in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, inflicting some casualties, police and a witness said.
The blasts came a day after a suicide gun and bomb attack in the city of Lahore killed 24 people and wounded nearly 300. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Lahore bomb, saying it was out of revenge for an army offensive in the Swat region.
“They were two bomb blasts. There are casualties but I don’t know the numbers. A building has caught fire,” senior police officer Mohammad Anis said.
PHOTO: AFP
The bombs went off in a crowded market area of Peshawar’s old city.
Officials later said at least five people were killed and 30 people were injured in the blasts.
“I can see about 15 wounded people lying on the ground. People are running out of their shops,” city resident Tahir Ali Shah said by telephone.
Militant violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has surged since mid-2007, with numerous attacks on the security forces, as well as on government and Western targets.
The violence and a perception the government was being distracted by political squabbling and failing to act to stop the Taliban had alarmed the US and other Western allies.
But the army moved against the Taliban in their Swat valley stronghold late last month after the militants had seized a district only 100km from the capital and a peace pact collapsed.
A militant commander loyal to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud said earlier yesterday the Lahore attack was to avenge the offensive in Swat.
“We have achieved our target. We were looking for this target for a long time. It was a reaction to the Swat operation,” the commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The government also said the attack in a high-security area in Lahore where a police headquarters, emergency services building and a military intelligence office are located, was revenge for the Swat offensive.
Pakistan is vital for US plans to defeat al-Qaeda and cut support for the Afghan Taliban and the US has been heartened by the Swat offensive and by public support for it.
“The response by the military so far has the support of the Pakistani people,” White House National Security Adviser General James Jones said in Washington on Wednesday.
“The government’s popularity has shot up a little bit in the polls and that is going to have an effect in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.
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