Bomber strikes Peshawar checkpoint

06/09/2008| IslamWeb

At least 17 people have died and 40 were wounded after a car bomb went off next to a police checkpoint in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials said.

The toll is expected to rise as a building nearby collapsed as a result of the blast on Saturday.

 

A senior police official said: "A vehicle laden with explosives went off near the police post which has been totally destroyed."

 

Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, Kamal Hyder, said the 4x4 had targeted the post and a spokesperson for Tehrik-e-Taliban, a Pakistani fighter group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

The group says it has carried out several similar attacks in the past, among them the recent double explosion at a weapons plant.

 

Election day

 

Mohammed Sulman, a senior police official in the area, said many people were trapped under the debris of two damaged buildings in a nearby market.

 

Television footage showed obliterated vehicles and pieces of the checkpoint scattered across a large area.

 

At Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, the provincial capital of North West Froniter Province, officials said about 30 wounded people had come for treatment.

 

"They have got multiple wounds," physician Mohammad Idrees said. "Some of them have their arms and legs broken, and others have got head injuries.

 

"We have declared an emergency here."

 

The explosion came as members of parliament and the country's four provincial assemblies were voting for a new president to replace Pervez Musharraf, who resigned last month.

 

PHOTO CAPTION

 

A Pakistani injured man arrives at a local hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008.