Car Bomb Kills 9 in Packed Northwest Pakistan Market

A car bomb tore through a packed Pakistani market on Wednesday, killing nine people in the sixth attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar in less than a week, officials said.

Police said the bomb was planted in a car and exploded near a police station, destroying shops and vehicles as civilians thronged the congested area at the start of the working day in the Taliban-hit city.

Peshawar runs into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, which Washington considers the global headquarters of al-Qaida and where U.S. drone strikes target Islamist fighters active in the nine-year war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistan struggles with near-daily attacks blamed on Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants that have killed around 4,000 people since government troops evicted Islamists from an Islamabad mosque in a deadly July 2007 siege.

"We have received nine dead bodies. There are three children and one woman among the dead," Abdul Hamid Afridi, the head of Peshawar's main Lady Reading Hospital, told Agence France Presse.

"Nineteen people were also injured. Children and women are among the injured as well."

Peshawar city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan confirmed the death toll, but said 21 people had been injured in the attack.

"The bomb blast took place in a congested market. All the dead and injured are civilians," Siraj Ahmad, head of Peshawar administration.

Television footage showed a car destroyed and two shops badly damaged, with dozens of local people assisting ambulances and police with the rescue effort.

Two bomb attacks targeting police in Peshawar killed six people on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a police patrol in which a teenage bomber killed five people on the city's outskirts.