ISLAMABAD (PAN‘s northwestern town of Hangu on Thursday evening, local police and witnesses said.
The explosion rocked a hotel, close to police and district administrator’s offices in the main bazaar at 6pm, witness Zulfiqar told Pajhwok Afghan News. The blast created an eight-foot-deep crater.
Fifteen houses and shops in the vicinity were flattened as a result of the suicide assault, the ninth since Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s killing during a US forces’ operation in Abbottabad on May 2.
Although there was no immediate assertion of responsibility for the Hangu explosion, the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed recent strikes. The group has vowed to avenge Osama’s death.
Senior police official Masood Afridi confirmed it was a suicide attack, killing 24 people and injuring 26 others. The explosives-laden car was blown up at a checkpoint near a city police station, he said.
A day earlier, eight policemen were killed and 22 others wounded in a suicide attack that razed a police station in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The target of the bombing was a three-storey building that housed the Criminal Investigation Department in the high-security cantonment area. The scene on the University road was less than a kilometre from the US consulate.
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