Peshawar Pakistan, June 12 -- At least 34 people were killed and 80 others injured in a twin blast that ripped through a supermarket in Peshawar of northwest Pakistan late Saturday night, reported local Urdu TV channel Samaa quoting local officials.
According to the local media reports, the twin bomb attack took place at about 23:50 p.m. local time Saturday at the Khyber supermarket of the city.
The first bomb, which, according to police, was fixed to a motorbike and was relatively small in intensity, went off at the market at about 23:40 p.m. local time, injuring three people. As the rescue team rushed to the site, the second bomb, which, again according to police, was a remote-control device, but much bigger in intensity, exploded among the large crowd of people gathering at the site.
Over 20 shops near the blast site were reportedly destroyed. A two-stored hotel was completely destroyed and many people were buried under the debris of the collapsed buildings around the blast site.
Some of the local media offices near the blast site were also damaged and at least one journalist was killed and three media personnel were injured in the explosion.
The blasts were just four minutes apart. The first blast was quite small but as people gathered close to the site of the explosion, the second one, which was real big one, went off. The building of super market caught fire after the blasts.
Rescue teams reached the spot soon after the incident and kicked off relief activities. The injured are being rushed to nearby hospitals. Emergency has been declared in the city hospitals.
More than 4,400 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the nearby tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
"The first blast was triggered by a timed device planted in the bathroom of the hotel while a suicide bomber riding a motorbike blew himself up near the hotel," bomb disposal chief Shafqat Malik told AFP.
"We have found head and some other body parts of the bomber from the attack site," Malik added.
The latest violence came hours after visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to eradicate militant sanctuaries at "detailed" talks about a peace process with the Taliban that inaugurated a joint peace commission.
Karzai and a raft of top aides held two days of meetings in Islamabad, just weeks after bin Laden's death, heightening calls within the United States for a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan.
CIA chief Leon Panetta held talks Friday with top military and intelligence officials and discussed ways to strengthen future intelligence sharing, the Pakistani military said.
The twin attack also came a week after Pakistan's Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the network's most feared operational leaders, was likely killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan tribal region, near the Afghan border.
Peshawar is the gateway to Pakistan's rugged northwest tribal region, which is known as the country's premier stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants, and bomb attacks are common.
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