Pakistani police stand beside the wreckage of destroyed vehicles after a suicide car bomb in Charsadda on November 10, 2009. — PHOTO: AFP

CHARSADDA (Pakistan) – A SUICIDE car bomb tore through a crowded shopping street in Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 32 people in the third militant attack to strike the nuclear-armed country in as many days.

The bomber blew up his vehicle in the heart of the north-west town of Charsadda on a road lined with fruit and juice shops, ripping off shop roofs and littering the ground with slippers, human flesh and broken push carts.

The blast damaged signboards and at least six vehicles, including two buses, during the afternoon shopping rush in the town’s most popular market.

‘The death toll has gone up to 32 and more than 100 people have been wounded in this suicide attack,’ Senior Minister of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Bashir Bilour told reporters. Seven children and three women were among the dead, police said.

The wounded were being treated in Charsadda and the northwestern capital Peshawar on the edge of Pakistan’s tribal belt, which US officials call the most dangerous place on Earth and a chief Al-Qaeda sanctuary.

The government blames increasing attacks on Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), which is the target of a major ongoing offensive and which wants to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud by a US missile in August. — AFP