At least 37 people were killed Wednesday by a suicide bomber who detonated his bomb at a funeral in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, a country gripped by a deadly wave of bombings Taliban allied with al-Qaeda, police said.
The man slipped in the middle of some 200 people who were preparing to pray at the funeral of the wife of a man fighting in an anti-Taliban militia, in the hamlet of Adeza, a suburb of Peshawar The metropolis of north-west, located at the gates of the tribal areas Islamist insurgent stronghold.
"The bomber came on foot, his target was the anti-Taliban militia members" who attended the outdoor funeral, told AFP by telephone Ijaz Mohammad Khan, a police officer in Peshawar.
"We took 37 dead and 45 wounded in hospital," said on-site AFP Kalam Khan, a police officer in Peshawar.
Adeza, a hamlet known for its anti-Taliban militia, was the target of fundamentalist attacks on several occasions in recent months.
Shortly after the powerful explosion, the floor of the place of prayer was stained with blood and shreds of flesh were lying among many caps that men cover their heads for prayer.
This new attack comes a day after a devastating attack at a service station near the offices of the powerful intelligence services in Faisalabad in central Pakistan, which killed 25 people and injured over 150.
A bomb hidden in a car set off a series of devastating explosions in the gas station was completely destroyed.Several surrounding buildings collapsed, but not the intelligence services building, apparently the target of the attack, police said.
Pakistan is experiencing an unprecedented wave of attacks (about 450 since summer 2007), mostly perpetrated by suicide bombers Taliban allied with al-Qaeda, which killed more than 4,100 dead in three and a half years.
The main insurgent group, the Movement of Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has declared in the summer of 2007 and in unison with Osama bin Laden himself, jihad Pakistani government for supporting Washington in its "war against terrorism" since late 2001.
The attacks are mostly security forces - army, police, intelligence services - but also increasingly civilians.
Friday in full great prayer, eleven people were killed in an attack against a mosque in Nowshera, near Peshawar, near the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
On several occasions recently, TTP claimed responsibility for attacks against security forces in retaliation, he said, the Pakistani army offensives and firing missiles almost daily by U.S. drones on executives' Al-Qaeda and Taliban Pakistani and Afghan tribal areas.
Tuesday, at least five insurgents were killed by two missiles from a U.S. drone in South Waziristan, the main stronghold of the TTP, as security forces.
