The death toll of a bomb attack on a clothes market in Pakistan's northwest border has risen to 24 as several more victims succumbed to injures, local media reported on Monday.
More than 70 others were injured in the incident, according to Urdu TV channel Geo. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a Punjab-based extremist group which often carries sectarian attacks against Shiite Muslims in the country, claimed responsibility for the attack.
LeJ spokesperson Ali Abu Sufiyan said that the Shia Muslims of Parachinar were targeted because they sent people to Syria to carry out attacks on the Syrian Muslims. "It was a revenge of the crimes against Syrian Muslims by Iran and Bashar al Assad," he said, quoted by local Urdu TV channel Express.
The attack occurred at about noon Sunday when a remote-controlled bomb containing an estimated 30 to 35 kg of explosives ripped through a crowded second-hand clothes market in Parachiar, the capital town of Kurram Agency, a tribal area bordering Afghanistan.
Many of the injured people remained in serious conditions and had to be airlifted to hospitals in the nearby city of Peshawar through the army's helicopters.
Both Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have condemned the attack and ordered best possible medical facility to the injured people.
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