50 killed in twin suicide blasts in NW Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, May 13 (Xinhua) — At least 50 people were killed and dozens injured in a twin suicide blast that took place early Friday morning at a military training center in Charsadda, a city some 30 kilometers northeast of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, local media quoted the top official of the police department in the city as saying.
According to the local Urdu TV channel Samaa, the attack took place at about 6:10 a.m. local time when a motorcycle and a horse cart both laden with explosives attacked a Frontier Corps (FC) training center in Charsadda.
The blasts took place at the main gate of the training center when FC personnel were on their way back after morning exercises.
Most of the people killed and injured in the blasts were army personnel and some of them were civilians as the military training center is located nearby a market, said local media reports, adding that over 15 shops were also destroyed in the blasts.
Police have cordoned off the area shortly after the blasts were reported. Journalists are kept away from the blast site. Local media reports quoted eyewitnesses as saying that ambulances were heard rushing towards the site.
All the killed and injured have been shifted to a local hospital in the city and a hospital in the neighboring city of Peshawar.
Friday morning’s terrorist attack is the most serious one of its kind in Pakistan since the killing of the al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden by the U.S. special task forces in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Abbottabad. Both al-Qaida and Pakistan Taliban have vowed to avenge the death of bin Laden by threatening to launch attacks in Pakistan as well as in other places of the world.