PESHAWAR: A teenage suicide bomber killed 17 people at a busy Pakistani market Wednesday, the third attack in three days blamed on Islamist extremists bitterly opposed to the US-allied government. A woman and three boys were among those killed when the bomber struck in Kohat, a city of at least half a million and one of the main garrisons for the Pakistan military, in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The bomber detonated close to a warehouse owned by an anti-Taliban militia leader and a bus stop amid stepped up security for the month of Muharram. “I was on the other side of the bus and leaving when a huge blast blew out the bus driver's door. It hit my chest. I fell and the bus caught fire,” said Khalid Hussain, a 45-year-old driver from Orakzai with chest injuries. “It was a suicide blast,” said Kohat police chief Dilawar Bangash, adding that 17 people were killed and 25 wounded, seven of them seriously. Police said the bomber blew himself up at the door of a bus carrying passengers to the nearby tribal district of Orakzai, where Pakistan has encouraged displaced civilians to return after an anti-Taliban offensive. “The dead included one woman and three small children, aged between two and seven years,” Bangash said. Police said Wednesday's attack gutted two motorbikes, a car and a van in Kohat's main Tirah market. A wall collapsed of a warehouse owned by tribal elder Malik Hassan, the head of an anti-Taliban militia in Orakzai, leading police to suspect that Hassan or other opponents of the Taliban who used to meet there had been the target. Bangash said the head and legs of the suicide bomber, aged around 15 to 16 years old, were recovered. In Hangu district neighbouring Kohat, a policeman was killed following a kidnap drama in a shootout between Taliban militants and police, officials said. – Agence France
