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Bomb kills six in Pakistan

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan, June 5: A bomb ripped through a passenger vehicle parked at a bus terminal near the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Sunday, killing six people and wounding 11 others, police said.



The bomb was planted at the terminal near a market in Matani, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Peshawar, which lies near Pakistan´s lawless tribal region on the Afghan border, senior police officer Kalam Khan said.[break]



"We have reports that six people were killed and 11 wounded," Khan told AFP. He said the injured had been rushed to the hospital in Peshawar where the condition of one woman was critical.



"It appears to be a remote controlled bomb placed in a passenger vehicle waiting to leave for a rural area," Peshawar police chief Mohammad Ijaz said, adding that three other vehicles were also damaged.



He quoted witnesses as saying a man boarded the vehicle and left after leaving a package inside, telling people that he would be back soon.



Shortly afterwards a huge blast ripped through the vehicle. The casualties were mostly among the passengers, he added.



The dead included three women and one child, he said, adding that the wounded also included two women.



There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Pakistan´s Taliban have carried out several bloody attacks to avenge the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US commandos north of Islamabad on May 2.



The blast came after local officials had claimed a US drone strike killed Pakistan´s Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri on Friday.



The 47-year-old is one of the most feared operational commanders of the network that bin Laden founded and has been blamed for a string of high-profile attacks on Western targets, as well as in India and Pakistan.



He has a maximum US bounty of $5 million on his head and Pakistani officials said he was the target of a US drone strike in South Waziristan on the Afghan border on Friday, in which nine members of his banned group died.



The rugged tribal region is known as Pakistan´s premier stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.



Ijaz said five kilogrammes (11 pounds) of explosives were used in Sunday´s bombing.



Insurgents have in the past targeted members of anti-militant tribal militia known as lashkar.



But Ijaz said no tribal elder was there at the time of blast and the identity of the target was not immediately known.



The United States has long put pressure on Pakistan to mount a major air and ground offensive in North Waziristan, from where Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents launch attacks across the border in Afghanistan.



Pakistan has always maintained that any such operation would be of its own time and choosing, arguing that its 140,000 troops committed to the northwest are already too overstretched fighting militants posing a domestic threat.



More than 4,400 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.



The US has branded the rugged area, which lies outside government control, a headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth



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