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A car bomb tore through a crowded market in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 80 people hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the country to show American support for its campaign against Islamist militants. More than 200 people were wounded in the blast in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, the deadliest in a surge of attacks this month.
The government blamed militants seeking to avenge an army offensive against al-Qaeda and Taliban close to the Afghan border. The blast set scores of shops on fire, collapsed other buildings, including a mosque, and sent a cloud of gray smoke over the city. TV footage showed wounded people sitting amid the debris as people grabbed at the wreckage, trying to pull out survivors before carrying them down narrow alleys to hospital. One two-story building collapsed as firefighters doused it with water.
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 anti-Taliban offensive in South Waziristan and promised a new era in relations between Pakistan and the United States.
