Fruit crate bomb kills 11, injures 50 in Pak market

The blast killed or wounded most of those who had been bidding to buy the grapes, witnesses said. Bloody clothing and sandals were scattered around the site but damage was confined to the immediate area.The death toll, originally estimated at seven, rose steadily as wounded died. Police told Reuters their count had increased by midday to 12 dead and about 50 wounded and said it could rise as some of the injured were in critical condition.

“It is an act of terrorism,” Nasir Khan Durrani, Senior Superintendent of Islamabad police, said at the site of the blast at Islamabad’s main vegetable and fruit market on the outskirts of the city.

“There has been a series of bomb blasts in the (central) province of Punjab and elsewhere to terrorise the population and it appears to be a link of the same chain,” Durrani said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which police said occurred at 7.45 a.m. when the market was crowded with retailers buying vegetables and fruit from wholesalers. Several bombs have rocked Pakistani cities in recent months, including two in Lahore this month that killed eight people. There have been bomb attacks for years in Pakistan, with no one claiming responsibility and authorities presenting little evidence about the source.

Besides the conflict with India, centred on their mutual claims to Kashmir, Pakistan has had a tumultuous political history. The Army seized power last October at the end of a decade in which four elected governments were forced from office amid charges of corruption.