Islamabad, August 17: At least seven people have been killed and eight more injured as a car bomb explosion ripped through a petrol station in northwest Pakistan.
The blast took place on Monday, when a pickup truck carrying passengers pulled into a filling station in Charsadda town, about 30 km (18 miles) northeast of Peshawar, the capital of the restive North West Frontier Province.
“Seven civilians, including two women and three children, were killed on the spot while eight others were wounded,” local police chief Mohammad Riaz Khan told AFP.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb blast, which was apparently planted in the vehicle.
Police says the death toll may rise as two of the injured are in critical condition.
Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province is considered an insurgents den, where the Pakistani government says its forces have been locked in a fight with the so-called Pakistani Taliban for control of the territory bordering Afghanistan, since late April.
Meanwhile, local TV reports have claimed that Allama Ali Sher, a top leader of a banned religious group, has been shot dead on Monday morning in Khairpur town located in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh.
The attacks come just as the US special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke began his fifth visit to Pakistan for talks on a range of economic and security issues.
During talks with Pakistani officials, Holbrooke claimed that the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants have been defeated in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, due to the effective strategy in the region.
The top diplomat was referring to a new US strategy in the region, which puts Pakistan at the heart of the fight to defeat al-Qaeda and Taliban affiliated militants, in order to turn around the war in Afghanistan.
However, a surge in violence and the rising fatalities for international forces in Afghanistan show that the Taliban are not only still at large but that they are — as the top US chief in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal said — gaining the upper hand in the Afghan war.
—–Agencies