PESHAWAR - Banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has condemned the recent blast in Islamabad fruit market that killed 18 people while injured 30 others on Wednesday.
According to a statement, the TTP spokesperson Shahidullah Shahid said that attacking innocent civilians was illegal and prohibited, adding that the Taliban condemn blasts that target public places.
Hidden elements shouldn’t be ignored, he added.
A bomb tore through a bustling Islamabad market on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people, police and hospital officials said, the latest violence to hit government peace talks with the Taliban.
The blast took place around 8:00 am (0300 GMT) at a wholesale fruit and vegetable market close to the capital s twin city Rawalpindi, as hundreds of grocers and sellers gathered to trade.
It is the deadliest to hit the Pakistani capital since a huge truck bomb at the Marriott Hotel in 2008.
"It was a bomb blast, heard over a big radius," local police official Tehzeeb Hussain told AFP.
He said a bomb disposal team had reached the site and was collecting information.
The blast left a 1.5-metre (five-foot) diameter crater at the site, which was littered with body parts and guava fruits drenched in blood, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
Eyewitness Muhammad Tahir described the carnage as the bomb detonated.
"The blast took place around 8:00, when we were standing there -- bodies were flying everywhere, bodies were flying at the height of 20 to 25 feet," he told AFP.
Ambulances were rushing in and out carrying wounded people and dead bodies.
Senior local administration official Nauman Yousuf told AFP "it was a planted bomb".
A bomb disposal official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the device hidden in a fruit box weighed five to six kilograms (11 to 13 pounds) and was packed with nuts and bolts to cause maximum carnage.
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