At least 22 people were martyred and 57 wounded Friday when a car bomb tore through a market in a mainly Shiite area of Pakistan’s tribal belt, officials said, in an attack claimed by the Taliban.
It is the third time Parachinar, capital of Kurram tribal district, has been targeted this year, as local officials blame security agencies in the country for the failing to halt terrorist attacks.
Survivors described hiding inside shops after hearing a “huge bang”, as frantic bystanders rushed to help the wounded inside the busy market in Parachinar.
The attack comes after a wave of militant violence killed 130 people across Pakistan in February, unnerving citizens who had been emboldened by improving security and prompting a military crackdown.
“I heard a loud bang and people were screaming,” Muhammad Ali, a local resident who was in a market shop when the blast detonated, told AFP.
“We closed doors of the shop as we thought there might be a second blast, but we heard gunshots for a while and people were shouting, so we got out.”
They emerged to a scene of desperation, Ali said, describing bystanders carrying the wounded to hospital in any vehicle they could find as security forces arrived.
“We have 22 dead bodies here at the hospital and 57 injured, including women and children,” Moeen Begum, a surgeon at the local government-run hospital, told AFP.
Shahid Ali Khan, a local administration official, confirmed the blast had been a car bomb.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the blast, saying it was a “duty” to seek the “complete annihilation” of terrorism in Pakistan, and ordering assistance for local authorities.
But angry Shiite leaders and local residents quickly accused security forces of failure, with small protests breaking out in Parachinar.
Ali and a second eyewitness described seeing security forces fire on the protesters, injuring some.
“Terrorists crossing dozens of checkposts and carrying out attacks puts a question mark over the progress of security institutions,” Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, chief of a Shiite political organization, told AFP in Islamabad.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a faction of the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban, swiftly claimed the attack in a message sent to AFP.
The group was also part of the wave of attacks which shook the country in February, claiming responsibility for a suicide bomb in Lahore which killed 14 people.
Source: AFP
