PESHAWAR: A suspected suicide car bombing shook a busy square in Peshawar’s Khyber Bazaar on Friday, killing 48 people and injuring 148 others.

The injured, at least six women and children and a traffic policeman among them, were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital. Sixteen of them were stated to be in a precarious condition.

According to sources, most of the victims were passengers of a minibus passing through the Soekarno Square when a car blew up.

 Several pedestrians were either killed or injured in the explosion which, according to experts, was caused by more than 50kgs of explosives.

The blast overturned the bus, trapping bodies and injured passengers in the wreckage. Several bodies were mutilated, witnesses said.

‘So far 27 bodies have been identified,’ said Dr Sahib Gul, chief of the trauma centre in the hospital.He said the death toll might go up because several injured people were in critical condition.

The blast damaged dozens of buildings, shops and offices in the commercial centre of the provincial capital.
 
Several vehicles were also destroyed and electricity cables snapped. Security personnel cordoned off the area after the bombing, saying that they had information that another blast might take place in the area.

‘It was a suicide car bombing with at least 50kgs of explosives,’ said the bomb disposal unit’s chief, Assistant Inspector General Shafqat Mehmud Malik.
 
He said pellets and machinegun rounds had been mixed with the explosives to cause maximum damage.

However, Peshawar police chief Liaquat Ali Khan said it was too early to say anything about the nature of the attack.

‘Investigation is under way and we have to ascertain whether it was a suicide car bomb blast or the explosives were detonated by remote control.’

He said the target of the attack was also not clear, but most of the victims were passengers of a minibus.

Officials said that militants had started targeting civilians to pressure the government into scrapping the South Waziristan operation.

But some analysts said the attack could be linked to the suicide attack outside the Indian diplomatic mission in Kabul on Thursday.
 
Urban Transport Union’s chief Haji Jehangir Afridi said the minibus was owned by Suhbat Khan of Maryamzai village and two of his sons acting as cleaners were killed.

Shakeel, a passenger who escaped unhurt but lost his uncle, said: ‘I was standing in the crowded bus. All I can remember is that the bus overturned after the explosion took place.’

Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told reporters that the explosion was the handiwork of militants who were out to avenge military operations in parts of the NWFP and the tribal region.

‘Those taking lives of innocent people cannot be called Muslim or human beings and the government is determined to uproot them at all costs,’ he said.

Provincial Senior Minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour warned that more attacks could take place to deter the government from launching a military operation in the tribal area.
 
AFP adds: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ‘strongly condemned’ the bombing and expressed the government’s resolve to continue action against extremists.

Doctor Zafar Iqbal, the registrar of the Lady Reading Hospital, said all of the dead were civilians, among them three women and seven children.
 
Ghulam Nabbi, a shopkeeper in the Khyber Bazaar, said: ‘It was like somebody threw me out of my shop. For some time my mind stopped working, but then I started running to a safe place.’

It was the sixth bombing in Peshawar in four months and the deadliest in the country since March.

Despite reports of infighting among militants after the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban appear to have regrouped, with the new chief Hakimullah Mehsud keen to show his strength, analysts said.