Bomb blast kills six in northwest Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Jan 23 (AFP): Six people including two children were killed and seven injured in a bombing in Pakistan's restive northwest city of Peshawar on Thursday, officials said.
Nobody has so far claimed responsibility for the blast, which follows a recent surge in Taliban violence targeting the military. Subsequent retaliatory airstrikes in northwestern tribal regions on Tuesday killed some 40 militants.
"Six people including two children were killed and seven injured when an explosives-laden car, parked at a motor workshop on the outskirts of Peshawar, blew up," senior police official Najeeb Ur Rehman told AFP.
"Around 25 to 30 kilograms (44 to 66 lbs) of explosives were used in the blast", he added.
An spokesman for the government-run Lady Reading Hospital confirmed the causalties and said two of the inured are in critical condition.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said flesh and blood was scattered around the area, and vehicles nearby had also been destroyed.
On Tuesday Pakistani jets and helicopter gunships engaged in one of the heaviest bombardments in recent years in North Waziristan, a tribal region which is a stronghold of militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The air strikes came a day after a Taliban suicide bomber killed 13 people in a blast near army headquarters. Last Sunday a vehicle-borne bomb killed 26 paramilitaries in the town of Bannu.