A suicide bomber attacked Pakistani police guarding a protest rally against power cuts in the city of Peshawar today, killing 23 people, police and government officials said.
Islamist militants fighting the government of nuclear-armed Pakistan have launched a string of bomb attacks in Peshawar, which is the gateway to Afghanistan, killing hundreds of people over the past year.
The latest blast went off in an area of the old city known as the Storytellers' Bazaar as a protest against power cuts organised by a religious party was breaking up, officials said. "A man blew himself up when policemen were sitting in their vehicles after the rally," said provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain.
Several officials of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) party, which organised the protest, were among the dead, said members of the party which has a record of sympathising with Islamists.
Police said 23 people had been killed and 29 wounded.
Earlier, a six-year-old school boy was killed and five boys and two other people were wounded when explosives went off outside their school in the city, doctors said.
Security forces have made significant gains against the militants in offensives over the past year, clearing the fighters from strongholds in the Swat valley and in the regions of South Waziristan and Bajaur on the Afghan border. But the militants have demonstrated time and again they have the capacity to strike back with gun and bomb attacks.
Earlier this month, Taliban militants killed five people in a bold gun and bomb attack targeting the US consulate the northern city.
At least three bomb attacks targeted paramilitary posts along routes leading to the heavily fortified US consulate building in Peshawar. Police officials said eight people died in the attack.
Reuters