[ad_1]
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – At least 31 people were killed and 50 others injured when a bomb hidden in a box of vegetables tore up a crowded market in the tribal region of northwestern Pakistan on Friday. its managers.
The attack took place during Friday's bazaar in Kalaya, a city located in a predominantly Shiite area of the Orakzai tribal district, told AFP a top local official, Khalid Iqbal.
"According to our original investigation, it was an improvised explosive device hidden in a box of vegetables," he said.
Shahbaz Ali, a resident who bought food in the market, said he saw a boy, his face covered, riding a motorcycle.
"Suddenly, an explosion occurred and I lost consciousness," he told AFP.
A senior official, Ameen Ullah, said 31 people had been killed, including 22 Shia Muslims.
More than 50 people were injured, including 17 in critical condition, he said.
The tribal police confirmed the record.
Many of the injured were taken to a hospital in Kohat, a town in the neighboring province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where doctors said all staff had been summoned to the trauma center.
Ambulances were visible outside the hospital, where parents were waiting for news of their loved ones. A man was looking for people before entering the building, a precaution against a second attack on the hospital staff.
"We received a corpse and 28 wounded, three of them serious and taken to Peshawar," Fazl Ur Reham, deputy medical director of the hospital, told AFP by telephone.
Six other wounded were operated on, he said. Most of the wounded had been hit by ball bearings and fragments of the bomb.
"We are expecting more injuries on the site," he added.
ON THE FRINGE
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 said the mountainous region provided safe havens for militants, including the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda – a claim 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, drugs and contraband products.
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.
[ad_2]Source link
