Bomb blast kills 26 in tribal Pakistan

A remote-controlled bomb blast killed at least 26 people and wounded more than 60 others in a tribal region of northwest Pakistan on Tuesday in the deadliest such attack in months, officials said. The explosion took place in a market in Jamrud, one of the towns of the troubled Khyber tribal region, which also used to serve as the main supply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan. "The death toll in today's blast has now risen to 26 while more than 60 people were injured," said top administration official in Khyber, Mutahir Zeb, updating the death toll. He said the target of the attack was not yet clear. "According to initial information, it was a remote controlled device planted in a passenger pickup van," he added. A senior doctor in a local hospital in Jamrud, Muhammad Anas, earlier said that they had received 18 dead bodies and more than 50 injured people. Pakistan's northwestern region is a stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives and other Islamist militants opposed to the government. Insurgents, particularly from the nebulous TTP network, have carried out bomb and gun attacks killing more than 4,700 people across Pakistan since July 2007. But there had been no major Islamist militant attack in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed 46 people, targeting anti-Taliban militia at a funeral in the northwestern district of Lower Dir on September 15. Pakistan has for years battled insurgents in the northwest and the tribal belt, with more than 3,000 soldiers killed in the battle against militancy. On Monday Pakistani authorities recovered the bodies of 10 soldiers in an exchange of bodies with Taliban militants following a clash two weeks ago in the tribal belt. An official of the military's media wing said the 10 soldiers had been missing in Orakzai district since December 21 when rebels attacked a checkpost and killed 13 others. That exchange came four days after the corpses of 15 members of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) were found in the small northwestern town of Shawa, in North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border, almost two weeks after they were kidnapped.