Bomb Kills 26 in Pakistan

A remote-controlled bomb blast killed at least 26 people and wounded more than 60 others in a tribal region of northwest Pakistan on Tuesday in the deadliest such attack in months, officials said. The bomb was targeting a militia opposed to the Pakistani Taliban and was blown in a market close to the Afghan border. The explosion took place in a market in Jamrud, one of the towns of the troubled Khyber tribal region, which also used to serve as the main supply route for Nato forces in Afghanistan, and hit vehicles being used by the militia in the region, said local security officer Khan Dad Khan. "It was a huge blast and caused damage to a number of vehicles at a bus terminal," said Khyber tribesman Khan Zaman from the Jamrud bazaar, around 25 km  west of the city of Peshawar. Tribesman said members of the pro-government Zakhakhel tribal militia were the target of the attack. Members of the militia -- or "lashkar" -- were filling their vehicles at the station when the bomb exploded. Shopkeeper Sharif Gul said the blast ignited a huge fire. "People were burning," he said at a hospital in Peshawar, the main town in the northwest. "There was nothing to put out the fire." Pakistan's northwestern region is a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives and other Islamist militants opposed to the government. The army has supported the formation of anti-Taliban militias in northwest Pakistan, but the insurgents have ruthlessly attacked the groups over the last two years. Many of the country's bloodiest bombings have been against militia members or their families. Insurgents, particularly from the nebulous TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) network, have carried out bomb and gun attacks killing more than 4,700 people across Pakistan since July 2007. The Pakistani army has carried out offensives against the militants in their strongholds in tribally administered regions like Khyber, but the insurgents have proven to be a resilient foe. There have been conflicting reports of peace talks between some insurgent factions and the government in recent months. While the frequency of large-scale attacks outside of the northwest has decreased over the last 18 months, the violence has triggered fears in the West that nuclear-armed Pakistan may be buckling under extremism. The last major bombing was last 15 September close to the Swat Valley, when a suicide bomber killed 46 people, targeting anti-Taliban militia at a funeral in the northwestern district of Lower Dir. Pakistan has for years battled insurgents in the northwest and the tribal belt, with more than 3,000 soldiers killed in the battle against militancy. On Monday Pakistani authorities recovered the bodies of 10 soldiers in an exchange of bodies with Taliban militants following a clash two weeks ago in the tribal belt. An official of the military's media wing said the 10 soldiers had been missing in Orakzai district since December 21 when rebels attacked a check post and killed 13 others. That exchange came four days after the corpses of 15 members of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) were found in the small northwestern town of Shawa, in North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border, almost two weeks after they were kidnapped.