Car bomb at market in Pakistan kills 17

— A car bomb exploded in a crowded market in Pakistan’s troubled northwest tribal region near the Afghan border Monday, killing 17 people and wounding more than 40 others, officials said.

The bomb went off near the women’s waiting area of a bus stop close to the office of one of the Khyber tribal area’s top political officials, said Hidayat Khan, a local government official. It was unclear if the office was the target, he added.

The 17 dead included five children and two women, said Abdul Qudoos, a doctor at a hospital in Jamrud town, where the attack occurred. At least 44 people were wounded, he said.

The explosives were packed in a small white car parked in the middle of the road, blocking traffic, said Shireen Afridi, who was nearby buying a phone card when the bomb exploded.

“There was fire in which children burned, women burned, poor Afghan people burned, and it caused a lot of destruction,” said Afridi.

Local TV footage showed several cars and shops in the market that were badly damaged. Residents threw buckets of water on burning vehicles as rescue workers transported the wounded to the hospital.

Also on Monday, Taliban militants fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at an army convoy in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing three soldiers and wounding three others, said Nisar Ahmad, a local government official.

The soldiers were escorting a polio vaccination team outside the town of Lakki Marwat when the attack occurred, said Wazir Khan, a local resident.

In the southern city of Karachi, an unknown gunman shot and killed a Pakistani working with the World Health Organization’s anti-polio campaign, said police officer Qamar Ahmed.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon quietly notified Congress this month that it would reimburse Pakistan nearly $700 million for the cost of stationing 140,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan. Recent reimbursements, called coalition support funds, have been held up, in part because of disputes with Pakistan over the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed, the operations of the CIA, and Pakistan’s decision to block supply lines into Afghanistan last year.

The $688 million payment, of which Congress was notified Dec. 7, is the first since early this summer. It will cover food, ammunition and other expenses from June through November 2011.

Information for this article was contributed by Abdul Sattar, Ishtiaq Mahsud, Adil Jawad, Rahim Faiez and Heidi Vogt of The Associated Press and by Graham Bowley, Habib Zahori, Sharifullah Sahak, Khalid Alokozai, Eric Schmitt, David E. Sanger and Declan Walsh of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 12/18/2012

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