Rescuers picked through the smoking rubble of shops in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, the day after a car bomb blast killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 100.
Witnesses said firefighters were still hosing down shops in the stricken Saddar Bazaar area where the bomb exploded outside a crowded department store Thursday.Police struggled to keep control of hundreds of onlookers and relatives of the victims, some of whom were lunging forward, threatening to disrupt rescue work. At one point, police had to baton-charge the crowd. No injuries were reported.
The final casualty toll has not yet been established, but the Peshawar-based English-language daily The Frontier Post said as many as 45 people had been killed and 200 wounded.
In a separate attack, two people were killed and several seriously wounded when a bomb exploded on a bus near the city of Faisalabad in the central province of Punjab on Thursday.
There was no immediate evidence to link the bus bomb with the blast in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, and no group has claimed responsibility for either.
The attacks occurred just over a month after Muslim militant suicide bombers devastated the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad on November 19, killing 16 people and wounding more than 60.
Provincial police chief Masood Shah said he suspected that an Afghan group was behind the Peshawar blast, seen as the latest in a series of explosions blamed on Afghans in the Peshawar area.
"We have recently busted eight groups, all Afghans, who have confessed their involvement in the bombing incidents," he told reporters. He did not suggest a motive.
Some officials said the bombings could be the work of supporters of embattled Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who accuses Pakistan of backing his foes in the Islamic Taleban militia. Islamabad denies the charge.
In other incidents, police said a small explosion wounded one person in Peshawar overnight. A hand grenade, time-bomb, detonator and five fuses were found in a bag left in a public telephone office in the city. The bag later exploded in a police station, but caused no casualties, local newspapers said.
Witnesses said few Afghans were to be seen in the streets of Peshawar on Friday, a Muslim holiday, and police reinforcements were sent to nearby Afghan refugee camps.