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At least 31 people were killed and 50 wounded when a bomb hidden in a box of vegetables ripped apart Friday a crowded market in the tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, officials said.
The attack took place in the Friday bazaar in Kalaya, a city in a predominantly Shiite area of the Orakzai tribal district, told AFP Khalid Iqbal, a senior local official.
"According to our original investigation, it was an improvised explosive device hidden in a box of vegetables," he said.
Another senior official, Ameen Ullah, said 31 people had been killed, including 22 Shiites.
More than 50 people were injured, including 17 in critical condition, he said. The tribal police confirmed the record.
Orakzai is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Afghan border, a region that has long been at the center of the global war on terror and has been described by Barack Obama as "the most dangerous place in the world. ".
Washington insisted that the mountainous region provided safe havens for militants, including the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda – an allegation denied by Islamabad.
Pakistan, which joined the US war on terror in 2001, claims to have paid the price of the alliance.
He has been fighting Islamist groups in the tribal belt since 2004, after his army entered the region to search for al-Qaeda fighters who had fled across the border after the war. invasion of Afghanistan by the United States.
Many bloody military operations have been carried out in the region, known officially as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and home to about five million Pashtuns.
Security has improved in the region in recent years, although lower level attacks are still conducted with devastating regularity, often targeting Shiites in the region.
But it remains notorious for the availability of cheap firearms and contraband, as well as for narcotics, including hashish and opium, grown in FATA and neighboring Afghanistan.
Residents also complain of unjustified harassment by security forces, citing disappearances and extrajudicial executions.
Earlier this year, Pakistan passed legislation paving the way for the merging of tribal areas in the neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and their integration into mainstream politics.
This decision will impose the Pakistani judicial system on a region still largely governed by the laws of the British colonial era and the tribal system of honor, and which has always existed on the sidelines of the state.
