Bomb kills one in Peshawar, police say

PESHAWAR: A roadside bomb targeting security forces killed at least one person in Pakistan on Tuesday, officials said, the first deadly attack in the restive northwestern city of Peshawar in two months.

A passer-by was wounded in the blast in Peshawar’s upmarket Hayatabad neighbourhood, which lies close to Khyber tribal district, where the army is battling Taliban-linked militants.

The bomb targeted a convoy of security personnel that passed by shortly before the blast and escaped unharmed.

“One person passing in his car was killed while another passer-by was wounded, both of them are civilians,” Rana Umer Hayat, a senior police official told AFP.

Peshawar has been the scene of countless bomb and gun attacks in the Pakistani Taliban’s nearly eight-year fight against the state.

The city suffered the worst terror attack in Pakistani history in December when Taliban gunmen massacred more than 150 people at an army-run school, most of them children.

But since then there has been something of a lull in violence. The last deadly attack in the city came in February when three heavily armed Taliban militants stormed a Shiite mosque, killing 21 people.

The Pakistan army has been waging a major campaign against Taliban and other militant strongholds in the North Waziristan tribal area since June last year.