By DPA,
Islamabad : At least 16 people, including 10 policemen, were killed and several injured Wednesday in a suicide bombing in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, officials said.
The bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a police checkpoint in the Tangi area of the province’s Charsadda district, the district’s senior police officer Mohammad Yar said.
“Nine policemen, including two officers, and six civilians died on the spot, while one officer succumbed to his injuries at the hospital,” Yar said.
He feared that death toll might increase as some of the around one dozen injured are in critical condition.
“I see here six civilian vehicles, all of them destroyed,” journalist Sabaz Ali Tareen told DPA over telephone from the scene.
“It’s hard to believe that anyone on board these vehicles would have survived,” he added.
“The road is littered with human blood and flesh and I can still smell gunpowder,” Tareen said.
Charsadda is located close to the restive valley of Swat, where the government has signed a peace deal with Taliban fighters to end around 16 months of fighting that has killed hundreds of people.
Under the deal, the government officially allowed the establishment of Islamic courts in the region, but emboldened militants have begun to spread their influence to the neighbouring district.