Peshawar, January 19: A bomb planted in a horse cart used to carry children exploded near a school in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding 15 others, officials said.
“The bomb was planted in a horse cart, which went off near a school building,” senior police official Mohammad Ijaz told AFP, adding that the blast took place in Peshawar city’s central Saddar neighbourhood.
The blast killed one person and wounded 15 others, mostly students, he said.
Local hospital officials confirmed the casualty numbers.
“We received 15 injured, 11 of them students, and one dead body,” Jamal Shah, spokesman for the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, said.
The injured include schoolchildren aged between five and eight years, Shah said. The blast shattered windows of the school building.
It was not immediately clear if the target was the school or whether the bomb exploded prematurely.
The bomb was planted in a tonga or a horse-drawn cart, bomb disposal squad official Hukam Khan said, adding it was a timed device that carried up to five kilogrammes (11 pounds) of explosives.
The dead man was the driver of the cart, he said, adding the horse was also killed in the blast.
The bomb went off after the schoolchildren had got off the cart, he said.
Nearly 4,000 people have been killed in suicide attacks and bomb explosions, blamed on homegrown Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks, since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad more three years ago.
-Agencies