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By ISMAIL KHAN
Published: October 28, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The arrival of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pakistan was overshadowed Wednesday by a devastating car bomb that tore through a market in the northwest city of Peshawar, an attack aimed at civilians and marking a clear escalation in the Taliban campaign to undermine the government.
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The bomb tore through a congested area of narrow alleys and crowded stalls in Peshawar’s old city, killing as many as 101 people, most of them women, and wounding about 160. A Pakistani official, who did not want to be identified, described it as the most serious in the history of a city that has become a frontline of Taliban terrorist attacks in recent weeks. This was the most deadly by far.

The explosion came about three hours after Mrs. Clinton arrived in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, a two-hour drive away, underscoring the challenges facing American officials in a nation where many blame United States policy for roiling the region since 9/11.

Mrs. Clinton was in closed-door meetings with senior government officials in Islamabad at the time of the explosion in Peshawar. “These attacks on innocent people are cowardly; they are not courageous, they are cowardly,” she declared later.

“If the people behind these attacks were so sure of their beliefs, let them join the political process,” she told reporters. “They know they are on the losing side of history. But they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort it is.”

Some television stations broadcast Mrs. Clinton’s remarks with a split screen, one half showing her speaking, and the other dominated by the flames and destruction of the blast.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the bombing was likely to be seen as another in a series of attacks by Pakistani militants to answer the military’s offensive against their stronghold in South Waziristan, along the Afghan border.

“The militants want to destabilize the government and intimidate the public,” Mehmood Shah, a retired brigadier and defense analyst based in Peshawar, told GEO news network. As long as the military operation continues, he said, “we can expect such attacks to carry on.”

A senior intelligence official blamed Taliban militants based in Darra Adamkhel for the attack. “We had intercept last week that spoke of a ‘heartrending’ attack in Peshawar,” the official said, requesting he not be named.

The militants, he said, spoke of carrying out the attack to “unnerve” the government. “This explains why they are now targeting civilians,” the official said. “All those killed today were civilians.”

A representative of a shopkeepers association in the area in Peshawar said he and others had received threats from militants to ban women from shopping in the market.

The car bomb exploded between two narrow lanes of Meena Bazaar and Kochi Bazaar, an area frequented by women. Most of the bodies were charred and mutilated beyond recognition, making it difficult to identify the victims and estimate their number.

A senior minister, Bashir Bilour, said Tuesday night that the death toll, which had climbed through the day as the extent of the carnage emerged, had risen to 101. According to witnesses, as many as three clusters of shops on narrow lanes and passageways collapsed in the explosion, and fires raged out of control.

Hours afterward, people were still trying to dig bodies and survivors out of the rubble, witnesses said, and white smoke wreathed the wrecked buildings. Sahibzada Anees, the deputy coordination officer in Peshawar, said most of the dead were women and children, adding that some of the wounded were in critical condition.

He said Peshawar was unable to cope with such a large-scale attack because it did not have enough trained firefighters and could not move excavators into the narrow streets to rescue those buried alive.

Government officials also acknowledged that Peshawar was not equipped to deal with a barrage of terrorist attacks.

Azam Khan, the senior most civil servant in the city, said there were inadequate numbers of police. “The police strength of Peshawar cannot secure everything,” he said. The militants had penetrated a three-ring police cordon around the city, he said.

Earlier this month, a blast in Peshawar killed at least 48 people in what was described at the time as the biggest attack of its kind in Pakistan in months.

The explosion Wednesday was in the same general area. Filled with small stores selling fabric and general merchandise, the old market is always congested with shoppers and traders and presents an easy target for the militants.

The Bomb Disposal Squad said more than 300 pounds of explosives had been packed into the car used in Wednesday’s attack — three times the amount used earlier this month.

At the colonial-era Lady Reading Hospital, an official said medics were overwhelmed by the casualties.

“A state of emergency has been declared at the hospital,” the official said. “We don’t even have time to count the bodies. Its absolutely mayhem here. We have called for blood donation to meet with the crisis.” Many officials spoke in return for anonymity under government rules.

A local government official said some people were still trapped under the rubble. “People have thronged the scene,” he said. “They have made it difficult for us to remove the rubble and retrieve bodies and those still alive.”

Mrs. Clinton landed in Pakistan on Wednesday for a three-day visit, saying she was determined to broaden America’s relationship with Pakistan beyond the security and antiterrorism concerns that have dominated ties and sowed mutual suspicion. “It is unfortunate that there are those who question our motives, who perhaps are skeptical that we are going to commit to a long-term relationship,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters traveling with her to Pakistan. “I want to try to clear the air on that while I’m in the country.”

Salman Masood, Pir Zubair Shah, Jane Perlez and Mark Landler contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan. Alan Cowell contributed from London