Pak: 25 killed, 50 hurt in two separate blasts

Police officials said 18 people were killed and nearly 40 others injured when a blast ripped through the A-1 Bakery in Nowshera cantonment, 40 km from Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the blast was caused by a remote-controlled bomb that was planted in the bakery.

The blast set off several gas cylinders and triggered a major fire, other officials said. The bakery on Mall Road is run by the army and was crowded when the blast occurred at 20.30 hours local time. The wife and two children of a senior security official were among the dead, Geo News channel reported.

Several cars and nearby shops were damaged by the explosion and the subsequent fire. Fire fighters and rescue workers later extinguished the blaze.

In the earlier attack, seven persons were killed and 10 more injured when a bomb planted in a van went off in a bus stop at Mattani on the outskirts of Peshawar this morning. The bus stop was crowded at the time of the blast. Two children and a woman were among the dead. Security forces

cordoned off the bus stop as rescue workers rushed the injured to hospital. Footage on television showed the mangled parts of the vehicle hit by the blast lying at the bus stop, which is frequented by residents of Peshawar, Kohat and the nearby Khyber tribal region.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks.

A militant spokesman told TV news channels that the vehicle in the bus stop was targeted because members of an anti-Taliban militia were in it.

The attacks came two days after a US drone strike in South Waziristan that is believed to have killed Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri.

The Pakistani Taliban have carried out a series of attacks to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden in a United States raid in the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2.