PESHAWAR: A powerful bomb blast ripped through a busy market outside a religious seminary in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, killing at least 30 people and injuring over 40 others, officials said. "We are trying to ascertain the nature of the blast" in Kalaya, a town in Orakzai agency, senior local official Khalid Iqbal told AFP. The Karachi attack was claimed by a separatist insurgent group called the Baluchistan Liberation Army, and did not appear to be connected to the attack on the market in the northwestern region of Orakzai. The blast occurred around the same time as three attackers attempted to storm the Chinese Consulate in the southern port city of Karachi in an unrelated incident in which two police officials were killed. Kalaya has a large population of Shiite Muslims, a minority in Pakistan that has been increasingly targeted by Sunni extremist groups such as the Islamic State and the Pakistani Taliban. Government officials said that death toll could rise as some of the injured were listed in critical condition. According to the initial investigation, an improvised explosive device was planted in a bike that was used for transporting vegetables to the popular Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal district's Kalaya area, bordering Afghanistan.
An explosion kills at least 35 people and wounds at least 55 at a market in Kalaya, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northern Pakistan.