A bomb exploded near a court building in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday killing at least five people, officials said, the latest in a series of similar attacks in recent months.
Islamist militants have set off numerous bombs in the northwestern city, near the border with Afghanistan, in retaliation for an army offensive on their South Waziristan bastion, killing several hundred people.
Witnesses said Monday’s bomb was apparently planted in a auto-rickshaw near the court.
“Five bodies have been brought to the hospital,” Sahib Gul, a doctor at city’s main government hospital, told Reuters.
Pakistan’s army, which supported militant groups in their U.S.-backed war against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, now faces a stubborn Taliban insurgency on its own soil and mounting U.S. pressure to root out Islamist fighters in areas on the Afghan border.
In a reminder of the serious security challenges the army faces, militants attacked a mosque near the tightly guarded army headquarters on Friday, killing about 40 people, including army officers, just a 30-minute drive from the capital Islamabad.
Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, has been hit the hardest in the recent barrage of bomb attacks.
Aside from the loss of life, the violence has also had a psychological and financial toll, putting off foreign investors and unnerving investors in Pakistani stocks.
