Car bomb kills at least 80, Pakistan

A car bomb has ripped through a crowded market in northwestern Pakistan killing at least 80 people hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the country to show American support for the government's campaign against Islamist militants.

A car bomb has ripped through a crowded market in northwestern Pakistan killing at least 80 people hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the country to show American support for the government's campaign against Islamist militants.
According to North West Frontier Province Information Minister, 200 people were wounded in the blast in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The blast rocked a women's market, the latest attack in a surge of bloody attacks this month by militants apparently aimed at denting public backing for an army offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban.
An AP Television cameraman at the scene of the blast said many stores in the area had been destroyed.
He described seeing firefighters tackling blazes caused by the explosion, and both civilians and rescue workers trying to pull wounded people from the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Video from Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) one of the largest medical facilities in the area, showed seriously injured people being taken from ambulances and civilian vehicles into the building for treatment. The blast set scores of shops on fire and sent a cloud of gray smoke over the city.
One two-story building collapsed as firefighters doused it with water.
The explosion hit Peepl Mandi, a neighbourhood in the city where many Shiite Muslims live. Police officials said it struck the Mina Bazaar, which caters to female shoppers.
The area was full of smoke and very congested, and ambulances were stuck in traffic, according to officials. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but Peshawar has been the site of many of the attacks staged by Islamist militants this month, a wave of bloodshed that has killed hundreds of people.
The Taliban have warned Pakistan that they would stage more attacks if the army does not end its offensive in South Waziristan tribal region, where the military has dispatched some 30-thousand troops to flush out insurgents. Clinton, on her first visit to Pakistan as Secretary of State, was three hours drive away in the capital of Islamabad when the blast took place.
Speaking to reporters on her plane, she praised the army's new anti-Taliban offensive in South Waziristan and promised a new era in relations between Pakistan and the United States.