Peshawar // Bombing in two Pakistani cities killed at least 50 people and wounded scores on the last Friday of Ramadan, and officials warned the toll could rise.
Thirt-seven people were killed when twin blasts tore through a market in Parachinar, hours after a bomb detonated outside the office of the police in Quetta.
The bombings in Parachinar, capital of Kurram district, a mainly Shiite area of Pakistan’s north-western tribal belt, also wounded more than 150 people, officials said.
Nasrullah Khan, a local official, said the first bomb went off when the market was crowded with shoppers preparing for Eid Al Fitr.
“When people rushed to the site to rescue the wounded, a second blast took place,” he said.
Prime minister Nawaz Sharif called for security to be beefed up across the country as he condemned the attack, saying that no Muslim could ever imagine committing such a horrific act.
Pakistan has seen a dramatic improvement in security in the last two years, but groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and other extremist outfits still retain the ability to carry out attacks.
Parachinar was the location of the first major militant attack in Pakistan this year, the bombing of a market which killed 24 people in January and was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban. A second Taliban attack in March killed 22 people.
There was no immediate claim for Friday’s attack.
Kurram, one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal districts, is known for sectarian clashes between Sunnis and Shiites, who make up roughly 20 per cent of Pakistan’s population of 200 million.
Earlier in the day, nine policemen were among 13 people killed in the bombing in Quetta, capital of insurgency-wracked Balochistan province in south-west Pakistan.
The attack was claimed by both the local affiliate of ISIL and by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, according to the Site monitoring group. ISIL’s affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Khorasan Province, has been known to work with various Pakistani militant groups in previous attacks, including Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.
Officials at the city’s Civil Hospital said about 20 people were also injured in the blast, mostly by shrapnel.
* Agence France-Presse
