Pak Taliban deny hand in twin suicide blasts

AFP/Peshawar

Sandals of victims lying at the scene of two back-to-back bomb explosions, in Peshawar, yesterday

Pakistan’s Taliban yesterday denied responsibility for twin bomb blasts that ripped through a crowded market in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 39 people and injuring dozens. The attack, one of the deadliest in a series to hit Pakistan since US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in May, devastated the Khyber Super Market district which includes a hotel, shops and student accommodation. A small initial blast at around 11:30pm local time Saturday drew onlookers and emergency services before a second more powerful blast, believed to be from a suicide strike, detonated and was heard for miles around. “Death toll has risen to 39 in the blasts as four wounded people died in hospital,” senior local police official Ijaz Khan said, adding that the explosions were just four minutes apart. “The first blast was quite small but as people gathered close to the site of the explosion, the second one, which was real big one, went off.”  Nearly 4,500 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the nearby tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007. But the Pakistani Taliban, who have vowed to carry out attacks to avenge the killing of bin Laden, denied any role in the bombing and said they only aim their strikes at the government and military. “We did not carry out this attack in Peshawar. It is an attempt by foreign secret agencies who are doing it to malign us,” Tehreek-e-Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said on phone. “We do not target innocent people. Our targets are very clear, we attack security forces, government and people who are siding with it,” Ehsan said. Those killed included two journalists working for English-language newspapers Pakistan Today and The News. Many journalists working in Peshawar live in the rooms above the shops and eat at the marketplace’s restaurants. “The target of the militants was to kill a large number of innocent people in the busy market and journalists became the victims by chance,” provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP. The bombing badly damaged six shops and the hotel. Pieces of human flesh, along with debris including smashed crockery and broken furniture from the hotel, were scattered outside. “The first blast was triggered by a timed device planted in the bathroom of the hotel while a suicide bomber riding a motorbike blew himself up near the hotel,” bomb disposal chief Shafqat Malik said. “We have found a head and some other body parts of the bomber from the attack site,” he said. Abdul Hameed Afridi, chief doctor at Peshawar’s main Lady Readings hospital, confirmed the death toll and said 108 wounded were brought to the hospital overnight, with 47 of them admitted for treatment. Television footage showed ambulances rushing to the scene and taking away the injured, as well as the bodies of the dead. “I was parking my car near the hotel when the first blast took place. I rushed to the hotel to see nature of the explosion when the second bomb went off with a big bang,” local journalist Safiullah Mehsud said. Mehsud, who was injured in the head and legs, said he recalled being thrown into the air by the power of the blast, before being knocked unconscious. Mohamed Hashim, a cameraman working for a local TV channel, said he was taking tea after dinner when the blasts occurred. “I ran towards the hotel after the first blast and it was about that time when I saw a big fireball followed by another explosion,” said Hashim, who was wounded in his head and chest. Separately, an explosion Sunday wounded three men at a roadside near Malpur village outside the Pakistani capital Islamabad, police said. “It seems to be an old explosive device buried long ago under the bush and garbage” at a roadside, senior police official Bani Amin told reporters. “A father and his son riding a motorbike and a man travelling in a car were wounded in the blast,” Amin said. The latest violence came shortly after visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to eradicate militant sanctuaries, in talks on a peace process with the Taliban. Bin Laden’s death has heightened calls within the United States for a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan. The Peshawar attack came a week after Pakistan’s Al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the network’s most feared leaders, was believed to have been killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan near the Afghan border. Nearby Peshawar is the gateway to Pakistan’s rugged northwest tribal region, the stronghold of Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants, and bomb attacks there are common.