35 killed, 69 wounded in blast in Pakistan’s Khyber region

A bomb killed at least 35 people and wounded 69 others on Tuesday when it exploded in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber region, an Al Arabiya correspondent said citing a Pakistani official. Khyber region is one of the restive tribal areas where insurgents are battling government forces. “It was a huge blast and caused damage to a number of vehicles at (a) bus terminal,” Khyber tribesman Khan Zaman from the Jamrud bazaar, around 25 km (15 miles) west of the city of Peshawar told Reuters. Tribesman said members of the pro-government Zakhakhel tribal militia were the target of the attack. Members of the militia -- or “lashkar” -- were filling their vehicles at the station when the bomb exploded. Assistant Political Agent Jamrud Mohammed Jamil Khan said three members of the Khasadar tribal police force were killed. The wounded were taken to hospitals in Jamrud and Peshawar. Officials said there had been no claim of responsibility yet for the attack. Pakistani forces have targeted militants in Khyber, including the Pakistani Taliban, on and off for more than four years. Tuesday’s bombing is the first major one of its kind this year. On Dec. 30, 13 people were killed in a bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta. The attack also comes amid conflicting reports of peace talks between the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Pakistani government. The TTP, formed in 2007 and allied with the Afghan Taliban, is an umbrella group of various militant organizations entrenched in Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas along the porous frontier with Afghanistan. It has pledged to overthrow the Pakistani government after the military started operations against the militants in 2007. The Pakistani army has carried out offensives against the militants in their strongholds in tribally administered regions like Khyber, but the insurgents have proven to be a resilient foe. The violence has triggered fears in the West that nuclear-armed Pakistan may be buckling under extremism. The frequency of large-scale attacks outside of the northwest has decreased over the last 18 months, according to The Associated Press. The last major bombing was in September close to the Swat Valley, when a suicide bomber hit a funeral of a tribal elder opposed to the Taliban, killing 31 people.