PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with steel pellets attacked Peshawar on Thursday, killing five people in the second such strike in days.
The attack occurred at a security checkpoint in one of Peshawar's busiest areas in an army cantonment outside a government office and a church, where Pakistan's Christian minority were preparing to celebrate Christmas.
Pakistan has stepped up security during the holy Muslim month of Muharram, ahead of the Shia mourning period of Ashura, and one of Peshawar's largest Shia mosques was also close to the bomb site.
‘I was on my bicycle and just passed the checkpoint when I heard a deafening blast. It felt like somebody injected fire in my back. I fell to the ground,’ said fruit seller Alam Khan, whose back was pierced by flying shrapnel.
‘I saw smoke and dust. I wanted to help the injured but was bleeding myself and couldn't move,’ he added.
Officials said five people were killed, including a policeman and a woman, with 14 wounded, but said the bomber's target was not immediately clear, praising police for ‘intercepting’ the bomber at the checkpoint.
The explosion badly damaged three private vehicles and left police caps and helmets littering the ground, next to a police badge ripped from a uniform by the force of the blast, said an AFP reporter.
‘There were several targets,’ said Sahibzada Mohammad Anis, the top city administration official.
‘It could have been a Pakistan International Airlines building or a Shia mosque. There are also several shopping malls in this area,’ he said.
Bomb disposal expert Hukam Dad Khan said Thursday's attacker was wearing a vest packed with explosives, nails and steel pellets.
‘The suicide bomber was trying to cross the checkpoint. He was on foot. Police stopped him and he blew himself up,’ Mohammad Karim Khan, a police officer, told AFP.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the US embassy in Islamabad condemned the attack.
‘The prime minister said such terrorist acts cannot weaken the government's resolve to fight the menace of terrorism till its complete elimination,’ said a statement from Gilani's office.
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