Islamabad - At least 32 people were killed and over 50 injured in a car bombing in Pakistan's north-western city of Charsadda, officials said Tuesday. The blast occurred at a busy market in the town, which is located around 30 kilometres north-east of Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
"It was a suicide bombing. The bomber was riding a Suzuki Alto car," district police chief Riaz Khan said. "We have recovered his body parts."
Bashir Bilour, deputy head of the provincial government in NWFP, confirmed that 32 people were killed in the attack. "These people (Taliban) are neither Muslims nor human. How could a Muslim kill innocent people, women, children and elderly people?"
Express television quoted an eyewitness as saying that the bomber rammed his car into other vehicles and push-carts at the market.
Dozens of shops and several vehicles on the road were destroyed in the blast that also snapped the power cables and shattered the windowpanes of buildings in the vicinity.
Shahzeb Khan, a health official at the main state-run hospital in Charsadda, said around 50 injured were shifted to the medical facility while several others were moved to Peshawar.
He feared that the death toll may rise because there were "so many people who are in critical condition."
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the attack saying that it might have been carried out to retaliate against a military offensive in Taliban's heartland of South Waziristan - a remote district near the Afghan border.
More than 300 people have died in Taliban's intensified attacks on civilian and official targets in the urban centres since mid-October, when the military launched the Waziristan operation.
The Charsadda attack was the third major bombing in the last three days in and around Peshawar.
A suicide bomber exploded himself when the police tried to search him at a check post in Peshawar. Three people, including the driver of the rickshaw the assailant was travelling in and a policeman were killed.
A day ago, an attacker detonated his explosives in a cattle market in the outskirts of Peshawar, killing the main target, an anti-Taliban mayor, and 13 others.
Around 30,000 ground troops are pitched against some 10,000 guerrilla fighters in the Waziristan operation that Pakistan has described as crucial for its campaign to root out rising Islamic militancy.
A military statement on Tuesday said nine more "terrorists" were killed in the ongoing assault, while one was apprehended.
"During search operation in area north of Ladha, a group of terrorists was engaged, as a result five terrorists were killed," said the army. Ladha is one of the major Taliban strongholds.
Four more were killed in Makeen, the hometown of former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who died in a US drone attack in early August. Troops overran Makeen last week and demolished Mehsud's home.
The latest casualties reported by the army take the death toll in the three-week offensive in South Waziristan to 495 on the part of the Taliban, as against the 46 soldiers killed in the fighting.
Although the Pakistani government has claimed the Waziristan operation was successfully progressing, intelligence officials say that the Taliban were moving to the side valleys and neighbouring districts to avoid losses in street battles in their main stronghold.
Azam Tariq, a Taliban spokesman, vowed to orchestrate a "long guerrilla war" by early next year, after an end to the snowfall that blocks the important passes, making the movement across the mountainous district of around 6,620 square kilometres very difficult.
"We are preparing for the real war and time will tell who is winning," he said over phone from an undisclosed location.
