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Car bomb kills 95 in Peshawar
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad

An injured person at the site of the explosion in Peshawar on Wednesday. — AP/PTI

Hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Islamabad on a three-day visit, a power explosion ripped through Peshawar’s busiest market around noon Wednesday, killing at least 95 persons and injuring over 150 others.

Condemning the blast, Hillary vowed to fight out militancy while standing with the armed forces, the government and the people of democratic Pakistan.

Such was the impact of the explosion that several nearby buildings got destroyed and a large number of shops were gutted in the ensuing fire. The blast, one of the deadliest in the country, was the fourth in the capital of militancy-hit North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in less than a fortnight, all of them playing havoc with human lives and property.

Today’s blast destroyed four buildings and a mosque, and the blaze later spread to a dozen of shops.

Unidentified assailants had installed huge explosive material in a car parked in the centre of People's Mandi (market) located at the confluence of more than half a dozen congested smaller bazaars packed with shoppers.

“It was apparently donated from a remote control at about noon when maximum number of shoppers flock the area,” city police chief Sahibzada Anis Asghar said.

PTI adds: Shafqat Malik, chief of the city's bomb disposal squad, said the blast, the 13th terror attack in Peshawar in recent weeks, was caused by a car bomb packed with 150 kg of explosives.

Officials at Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar's main healthcare facility, said they had received 95 bodies and over 200 injured persons.

The 'Meena Bazar', a market exclusively for women, bore the brunt of the blast. Many bodies were charred and missing limbs, witnesses said.

NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told reporters that many of the dead and injured were women and children.

Rescue workers scoured the debris for survivors and the injured were still being taken to hospitals over three hours after the blast. Doctors said 50 of the injured were in a serious condition.