Peshawar Doomsday

Rescue workers were digging out the bodies and injured under the debris of collapsed shops amid fears many are still trapped. (Reuters)

“It seemed like it was doomsday,” Rafiq Ahmed, who sells rice on a shop in downtown Peshawar, told IslamOnline.net, lying on a stature at bed-starved Lady Redding hospital.

“I felt that the sun rose in the dark.”

A car bomb tore through a packed market, killing nearly people, mostly women and children, in one of Pakistan's deadliest attacks.

The blast targeted a crowded street in the Meena Bazaar of Peshawar, one of the most congested parts of the city and full of women's clothing shops and general market stalls popular in the city of 2.5 million.

Rescue workers were digging out the bodies and injured under the debris of collapsed shops amid fears many are still trapped.

“The massive blast made me deaf,” said Ahmed, who lost his left leg and suffers serious injuries on different parts of his body.

“The last thing I remember was myself and the customer hanging in the air as we both were tossed by the huge blast,” he recalled.

“I don’t remember what happened after that. My relatives have told me that I was put in an ambulance by the rescue workers, and brought here.”

The volatile northwest city, home to 2.5 million, has been the epicenter of attacks since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Over 1500 people have so been killed in several bomb blasts and suicide attacks during last 8 years in the city, which borders war-hacked Afghanistan.

Inferno

Shafiq Hussein, another injured vendor, lost his brother to the deadly attack.

“There were inferno-like scenes everywhere,” Hussein, whose relatives were trying to solace him in the jam-packed emergency room of the hospital, told IOL.

“The blast was as huge as it reduced many buildings and shops to rubble within a few minutes,” he recalled, fighting back his tears.

“I think it was a reminder of the day of judgment. Everyone was screaming and crying. I wanted to run, but could not as my body refused to move.”

Hussein, sporting a long black beard, received injuries in his back, arms and thighs as the intensity of the blast slammed him into the wall of a shop.

Taliban has denied any responsibility for the deadly attack and analysts appear to be doubtful about its involvement.

“The situation is very murky,” Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based security expert, told IOL.

“It is hard to say with full conviction that Taliban are involved in this terrorist attack.”

Yusufzai says the modus operandi adopted by the attackers does not match traditional Taliban tactics.

“They (Taliban) usually use suicide bombings or hostage-style tactics to rock the government. They never claim the responsibility for attacks in which civilians are killed.”

He cited recent attacks in Peshawar and at the International Islamic University Islamabad, whereby Taliban denied any involvement.

Peshawar is a gateway to Pakistan's northwest tribal belt, where the military is pursuing a massive military offensive against local Taliban militants.