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19 killed, 42 injured in Peshawar blast
PESHAWAR: A bomb exploded on a bus on the outskirts of Peshawar on Friday, killing 19 people and wounding several, hospital sources said."The Civil Secretariat bus was carrying around 40 people, most of them government employees, when there was a huge blast," police officials said. The bus was travelling from Peshawar to Charsadda, the official added.
The victims were shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Charsadda Hospital. Medical Superintendent LRH Rahim Jan Afridi, while talking to media confirmed that at the least 11 dead bodies have been received.
The management of Charsadda Hospital confirmed receiving eight bodies.
AFP adds: It was the deadliest attack in months on Peshawar, which has long been a flashpoint for a local Taliban insurgency targeting government officials, security forces and ordinary civilians.
The explosion went off in the Daudzai area, killing government employees and other private passengers riding the same bus, officials said.
"The bomb was planted under the bus," Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told reporters.
"We still can't say how many government employees and private passengers were killed, but there were heavy human losses," he added.
Police official Tahir Ayub told AFP 19 people were killed and more than 40 wounded. Another police official, Shafiullah Khan, said seven women and a girl, aged seven, were among the dead.
The explosion destroyed the back end of the bus. Bloodied pieces of human flesh littered the seats, along with blood-stained clothes on the road lined with juniper trees, an AFP reporter said.
Muhammad Ullah, 48, a police official on the bus, said there was a deafening blast.
"The explosion triggered massive smoke inside the bus but even then we could feel soft and bloody pieces of human flesh hitting our bodies," Ullah told AFP while being treated for head and shoulder injuries.
Arsalan, a junior clerk in the provincial auditor general's office, said he remembered asking the driver to stop at a mosque on the road for main Friday prayers then the explosion took place.
"I don't remember what happened next because I fainted and came round in a hospital bed," the 28-year-old, also with head and neck injuries, told AFP.
Courtesy www.geo.tv