Explosion in central Pakistan

vIndianz.com (16 Dec, 2009) — An alleged car bomb ripped through a marketplace near the residence of a politician in central Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 25 together with relatives of the lawmaker.

The explosion in the Punjab province town of Dera Ghazi Khan was the newest in a series of attacks that have killed over 500 people in Pakistan since October. The carnage has been blamed on militants avenging an army offensive against the Taliban in the northwest.

The preliminary investigation suggests Tuesday’s blast was ”a powerful car bomb,” local police Chief Athar Mubarak said.

The explosion left an enormous crater and was heard from a half-a-mile (kilometer) away, local commissioner Hasan Iqbal said. The residence of Zulfikhar Khosa, senior adviser to the chief minister of Punjab province, was badly damaged, as were a number of shops in the market.

Punjab province law minister Rana Sanaullah put the death toll at 10, and said at least 25 others were injured. Many people were trapped beneath the debris, and TV footage from the scene showed rescue workers scrambling around a smoke-filled pile of wreckage and metal.

Zulfiqar Khosa’s son, Dost Mohammad Khosa, said two of his cousins were amongst the injured.

”It was a direct attack on us,” he said, declining to contemplate who was behind it. His father was in Islamabad at the time of the blast, he said. Dost Mohammad Khosa was in the eastern city of Lahore.

”The entire market has collapsed,” he told The Associated Press by phone. ”There is smoke and people running here and there.”

Islamist militants have staged numerous attacks in Punjab to demonstrate their reach across the country, far ahead of the northwest tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

Numerous hard-line religious schools function in Dera Ghazi Khan area. The town also has experienced sectarian attacks pitting Sunni and Shiite Muslims against each other.

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