A suspected suicide car-bomber killed 49 people Friday in a busy shopping center of Peshawar in an attack that the government said underscored the need for an all-out offensive against the Pakistani Taleban. Police fear the death toll will rise as a number of the injured persons were stated to be in critical condition. There was no claim of responsibility but Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik said “all roads are leading to South Waziristan”, referring to the headquarters of the Pakistani Taleban in the northwest. “One thing is clear, these hired assassins called Taleban are to be dealt with more severely,” Malik told reporters in Islamabad. A large number of vehicles were damaged in the attack that took place in the Karachi Market of the Khyber Bazaar. “We think we have no other option except to carry out an operation in South Waziristan,” he added, while declining to say when that might happen. The suspected car-bomber set off his explosives as he was passing a bus, police said. The blast hurled the bus onto its side on a road in a commercial neighborhood of the northwestern city. Several cars were also destroyed. “The bus was making a turn when the blast occurred and it threw the bus into the air,” a witness told the Duniya television channel. An official at Peshawar's main hospital said 49 people had been killed including seven children. Passersby rushed to cover the bodies of victims whose clothes were burned off, while a man carried an injured woman. One man staggered from the scene, his face covered with blood. “I saw a blood-soaked leg landing close to me,” said Noor Alam, who suffered wounds to his legs and face and was at a hospital overrun with casualties. “I understood for the first time in my life what doomsday would look like.” “Death has to come one day, but we will keep chasing these terrorists, and this attack cannot deter our resolve,” Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said as he visited the scene. Peshawar Police Chief Liaqat Ali Khan said the attacker was in a car packed with a “huge” amount explosives and artillery rounds. – SG/AgenciesProvincial Health Minister Zahir Ali Shah told reporters that around 100 people sustained wounds in the attack. Emergency was immediately declared in all the major hospitals of Peshawar where the injured persons were rushed for treatment. Police and paramilitary troops cordoned off the area while the rescue operation continued. Stock market dips The bomb dented trade at Pakistan's main stock market, which has gained about 66 percent this year after losing 58.3 percent in 2008. “There was some negative impact as the market has come off its intra-day high but there seems to be foreign support at lower levels,” said Mohammed Sohail, chief executive at Topline Securities Ltd. Suspect held The bombing came just days after a Taleban suicide attacker evaded tight security to kill five people at the office of the UN's World Food Program in Islamabad and two weeks after another explosion killed 11 in another part of Peshawar. Malik said authorities had arrested a man alleged to have been the “handler” of the UN bomber. He gave no more details. Also Friday, militants ambushed a tanker carrying fuel for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan at a gas station near Peshawar, torching it, said Fazal Rabi, a police official. No deaths or injuries were reported in the attack, which highlighted the vulnerability of the US-led mission in landlocked Afghanistan as Washington debates sending more troops.
