Pakistan on alert as blast toll hits 24: police

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan's security forces Sunday braced for more attacks by Taliban fighters avenging military action against them, as the death toll from twin suicide blasts rose to 24, police said.
The two vehicle bombings struck the northwest on Saturday, the first on the outskirts of Bannu town, close to the rugged tribal region of North Waziristan, where Washington says Al-Qaeda and the Taliban rebels are holed up.
Hours later in the northwest city Peshawar, a car bomb ripped through a crowded area near banks, shops and a wedding hall on a road leading to the army cantonment, killing 10 people at the scene.
Sahibzada Mohammad Anis, a top Peshawar administrative official, said one man had also died in hospital from injures sustained in the blast, adding: "A total of eleven people were killed and more than 70 injured."
More bodies were pulled from the rubble of the targeted police station in Bannu overnight, sending the death toll in the first attack soaring.
"A total of 13 people were killed in the Bannu blast, nine of them are policemen and four are civilians. Of these four, one is a child aged about eight or nine," said Nazeef Khan, a Bannu police official.
Bannu police chief Mohammad Iqbal Marwat told AFP: "We have sent human flesh and other body parts for a DNA test to identify the suicide bomber."
The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for the Bannu attack and threatened to unleash bigger assaults on government targets to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone strike in August.
In Peshawar -- a frequent target of militant violence -- security forces were readying for further violence.
"Security has been put on high alert at Peshawar and other parts of the province. We have taken extra security measures," said Liaqat Ali Khan, police chief of the provincial capital.
"In my personal opinion, yesterday's suicide blast is a reaction to the Khyber operation," he added, referring to a military assault against insurgents in the tribal area which sits between Peshawar and Afghanistan.
The government in Islamabad has vowed to wipe out Islamist militants from Pakistan's northwest. Last April, troops launched a blistering assault in a bid to dislodge Pakistani Taliban from the northwest Swat valley.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of bombings that have killed more than 2,100 people over the last two years in the nuclear-armed country which the United States has put on the frontline of the war against Al-Qaeda.