Attack in northwestern Pakistan leaves 19 dead

At least 19 people were killed on Friday in a bomb explosion in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, a country rocked by several terrorist attacks perpetrated mainly by Taliban allies of al-Qaeda. The attack happened in Daudzai, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The device was hidden under a bus, hired by management to transport employees, but also accepts other passengers. At least seven women and a child of 7 years were among the dead and nearly 40 people were injured. "Most of the dead are government officials," the officer told. "We do not know exactly how many victims were employees and how many passengers," he said shortly after the provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Husain. "The bomb had seven to eight pounds of explosives, hidden under the bus, and was connected to a timer," the officer Shafiula Khan. Peshawar is the largest city in the northwest, at the entrance of the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a stronghold of the Taliban and the main shrine of Al-Qaeda in the world. On Friday, police in Quetta, a city in southwestern Pakistan, announced that the balance of the attack on Thursday against a religious school rose to 15 dead. Seven seriously injured people died overnight in hospital, police sources said. Thirty people were injured in the attack. Quetta is located in Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan. More than 5,000 people died nationwide in nearly 600 attacks in five years, most carried out by suicide bombers or their Taliban allies. The Taliban declared a jihad (holy war) to Islamabad's support for Washington's "war on terror." Since late 2001, when the top leaders of Al Qaeda fled Afghanistan for Pakistan's tribal areas, Pakistan became the main front line of the "war on terror." The Afghan Taliban are most active, such as the Haqqani network, also adopted these Pakistani tribal areas to the rear to carry out attacks against international forces in Afghanistan NATO, composed by two thirds by American soldiers. The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden died in a U.S. operation in northern Pakistan last year and drones (drones) CIA almost daily bombing the tribal areas of the northwest.