10 killed, 23 injured in blast in northwest Pakistan

Peshawar: At least 10 people were killed and 23 others injured today when a powerful car bomb went off in a crowded market near a police station in this northwestern Pakistani city, officials said.Over 50 kg of explosives was packed into the car that was parked a short distance from the police station at Badabher on the outskirts of Peshawar.The bomb was a timed device and the attacker could not get very close to the police station as he was apparently caught in traffic after the timer had been set, a police official said.Three children, a woman and three security personnel were among the dead, officials said.Several women and children were injured. The condition of three injured was described by officials as critical. Nearly 20 shops and four vehicles were destroyed and several more shops damaged in the fifth terrorist attack in the region in less than a week.The bomb tore through the market at a time when a large number of people were present in the area. The car in which the bomb was planted was reduced to a mangled heap of metal. Footage on television showed injured persons being taken to hospital in the backs of pick-up trucks.Senior police official Muhammad Ijaz Khan told the media at the site of the blast that the main target of the bomb was the police. "He parked the car here due to the rush," senior police official Mohammad Ijaz Khan told reporters.On Monday, six persons were killed in two bomb attacks targeting the police in Peshawar. Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a police patrol in which a teenage bomber killed five persons, including a senior police official.On Saturday, eight persons were killed when two suicide bombers driving explosives-laden trucks struck a strategic tunnel connecting Peshawar to the garrison town of Kohat.