Car bomb kills 20 in Pakistan

At least 20 people were killed by a car bomb in Pakistan today in a region already dangerously on edge after the attacks on India’s commercial capital last week.

Escalating violence is destabilising Pakistan’s north-west just as the country faces accusations from arch rival India that the gunmen behind the carnage in Mumbai were trained in Pakistan and steered by militants based there.

Neither the motive nor the culprits behind the blast in Peshawar were clear. But provincial government chief Haider Khan Hoti said “external forces” could be to blame – a comment understood in Pakistan to mean India.

The bomb went off near Peshawar’s famous Storytellers Bazaar in the early evening, wrecking a Shiite Muslim mosque and a hotel and setting a string of vehicles and shops on fire.

A senior doctor at the city’s main hospital, said 20 bodies as well as over 60 wounded people were brought there.

Pakistani forces have stepped up operations against Taliban and al Qaida strongholds in the north-west from where militants have been mounting attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Insurgents have responded with a campaign of gun and bomb attacks that have raised concern that they could cut a key supply line for Western troops through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.