PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The death toll from a suicide bombing carried out by a teenage boy who struck in a busy market in northwest Pakistan has risen to 45, officials said Tuesday.
The bomber, wearing a vest packed with explosives, flung himself at a military convoy as it passed through a bazaar in Shangla district on Monday, in the fourth deadly attack blamed on Taliban rebels in eight days.
"Two people died overnight and two more died this morning," doctor Ehsanullah Khan of the state run Alpuri hospital told AFP. Thirty-eight people remained in hospital with injuries from the blast, he added.
Fazle Karim Khattak, the administration chief of Malakand region, said that 39 of the dead were civilians and six were soldiers.
"The attacker was a young boy. He was standing at the side of the road. As soon as the convoy arrived, he rushed into the vehicles and blew himself up," Khattak told AFP.
A military official Monday said the bomber was about 13 or 14 years old.
After a brief lull following the death of Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in a US missile strike in August, Pakistan has again been plunged into crisis with a wave of militant attacks killing 125 people in eight days.
Monday's attack in Alpuri town came after a group of 10 Islamist extremists raided Pakistan's army headquarters over the weekend leaving 23 people dead and underscoring the vulnerability of the nuclear-armed nation.
Shangla borders the scenic Swat valley, where the government claims to have quashed the Taliban threat in an offensive launched in April after Taliban rebels advanced to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad.
The surge in violence comes as the army says it plans a full-scale offensive on Pakistani Taliban bases in lawless South Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan.
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