Peshawar

The markets of this chaotic city are usually cacophonous places, alive with the din of motorcycle rickshaws and legions of Pakistanis sizing up the pyramids of mangoes in one stall, office furniture in the next. But on a recent dusky evening at Sadar market, shopkeepers sipped tea and looked out into an empty street. No one, they fretted, wants to risk being there the next time a suicide bomber strikes.

A coordinated attack consisting of a remote-controlled bomb and a female suicide bomber killed at least six people Thursday in the volatile northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, ending a stretch of relative calm there. The blasts occurred at a police checkpoint in the city of 1.4 million people on the edge of Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border, where Taliban militants and their allies maintain strongholds. Plagued by scores of suicide bomb attacks in recent years, Peshawar recently has experienced a lull in militant violence.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- A suicide bombing at a crowded courthouse in Peshawar killed 19 people Thursday, the 10th such attack in six weeks for a city bearing the brunt of retaliation from Taliban militants battling Pakistani troops along the Afghan border. Now in its fifth week, Pakistan's military offensive has succeeded in retaking much of the ground held by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan, for years the militants' primary stronghold.

A powerful suicide bomb ripped through a packed bakery in the Pakistani military town of Nowshera late Sunday, killing at least 18 people. The attack came just hours after an explosion in nearby Peshawar left six dead. Scores of people were injured in the two bombings, officials and hospital staff said. Turk Ali Shah, a police department spokesman in Nowshera, about 25 miles east of Peshawar, said many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, complicating identification.

A coordinated attack consisting of a remote-controlled bomb and a female suicide bomber killed at least six people Thursday in the volatile northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, ending a stretch of relative calm there. The blasts occurred at a police checkpoint in the city of 1.4 million people on the edge of Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border, where Taliban militants and their allies maintain strongholds. Plagued by scores of suicide bomb attacks in recent years, Peshawar recently has experienced a lull in militant violence.

Pakistani authorities said a suicide bombing on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar killed three people and wounded 15 others. Peshawar Police Chief Safwat Ghayur said the bomber also died in the attack. Ghayur said the bombing appeared to be the result of a fight between two militant groups. Zakir Ullah, a police official at the scene, said two men exchanged gunfire in the street shortly before the bomber detonated his explosives. Television footage showed several wounded people, including at least two children, being treated at a hospital.

A suicide bomb attack killed four people Wednesday in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar, including a top national police official who appeared to be the target of the blast. Sifwat Ghayoor, commander of a paramilitary police force called the Frontier Constabulary, was killed when a lone suicide bomber approached his car on foot at a traffic light and detonated explosives, authorities in Peshawar said. Two of Ghayoor's bodyguards and a passerby were also killed. Eleven people were injured.

Government forces Saturday attacked the strongholds of Taliban fighters who for the first time had appeared poised to make at least a symbolic strike at a major Pakistani city. The offensive in the Khyber tribal agency just outside Peshawar, the main city in the country's troubled northwest, marked an abrupt about-face for Pakistan's new government. Until Saturday's action, the governing coalition had sought to negotiate with the insurgents instead of take them on militarily.

A powerful suicide bomb ripped through a packed bakery in the Pakistani military town of Nowshera late Sunday, killing at least 18 people. The attack came just hours after an explosion in nearby Peshawar left six dead. Scores of people were injured in the two bombings, officials and hospital staff said. Turk Ali Shah, a police department spokesman in Nowshera, about 25 miles east of Peshawar, said many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, complicating identification.

Two near-simultaneous bomb blasts tore through a crowded market in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday, killing at least 36 people and injuring more than 100. Police said many of the dead were women and children. Earlier, a suicide bomber killed 10 people outside a courthouse in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Pakistan has been hit with a wave of terrorist strikes as its army tries to clamp down on Islamic militants in the nation's tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

In a clear sign of Pakistan's deepening mistrust of the United States, Islamabad has told the Obama administration to reduce the number of U.S. troops in the country and has moved to close three military intelligence liaison centers, setting back American efforts to eliminate insurgent sanctuaries in largely lawless areas bordering Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The liaison centers, also known as intelligence fusion cells, in Quetta and Peshawar are the main conduits for the United States to share satellite imagery, target data and other intelligence with Pakistani ground forces conducting operations against militants, including Taliban fighters who slip into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and allied forces.

Pakistani officials angered by the secret U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden declared they would conduct a full review of operations by U.S. drone aircraft over the country and rebuffed an appeal by visiting U.S. officials not to close military intelligence liaison centers, U.S. and Pakistani officials said. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Islamabad on Friday in a bid to ease the mistrust deepened by the secret May 2 raid that killed the Al Qaeda chief. Pakistani leaders see the raid as a blatant violation of their country's sovereignty, and Washington's decision to not inform Islamabad in advance as an example of a glaring lack of trust.

A suicide bombing killed at least 34 people and injured more than 40 at a funeral held by an anti-Taliban tribal militia Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, prompting militia leaders to angrily rebuke the government for failing to provide enough support for their battle against insurgents. The attack occurred in the village of Adezai, about 15 miles south of the city of Peshawar and just east of the volatile tribal areas where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants maintain strongholds. A teenage boy appeared at the funeral and was thought to be a mourner, witnesses and local police said.

A car bomb at a fuel station killed at least 24 people Tuesday in the eastern city of Faisalabad in what authorities said appeared to be an attempt to attack nearby regional offices of Pakistan's main intelligence agency. The explosion, which was not a suicide attack, also injured more than 90 people, several of them critically, said Aftab Cheema, a Faisalabad senior police official. The initial blast at the compressed natural gas fuel station probably triggered secondary explosions of gas cylinders, police said.

Muslim cleric Muhammad Salim isn't worried that a court or Pakistan's president might spare a Christian woman from this village who has been sentenced to death on blasphemy charges. After all, if Asia Bibi, a mother of two, escapes the hangman's noose, he's confident someone else will kill her. "Any Muslim, if given the chance, would kill such a person," Salim said calmly, seated cross-legged on a straw mat at a mosque here. "You would be rewarded in heaven for it. " Salim isn't the only one calling for vigilante justice.

Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani immigrant who admitted he'd hoped to kill as many as 40 people by detonating a car bomb in Times Square in May, was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum handed down the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Shahzad, 31, appeared proud but defiant in court and unapologetic for trying to kill as many Americans as he could. He wore dark blue prison garb with a white knit cap on his head.

A car bomb blast tore through a crowded market in a city near Peshawar today and killed 34 people, the third terrorist attack to strike the area in three days. The blast occurred in Charsadda, about 25 miles northeast of Peshawar. More than 50 people were injured in the suspected suicide bombing, said Charsadda police official Riaz Khan. As Pakistani troops continued to battle Taliban militants in the South Waziristan region along the Afghan border, authorities have failed to stem the tide of retaliatory violence that militants have inflicted on the country.

A car bomb ripped through an Internet cafe and other businesses Saturday in a congested neighborhood of Peshawar, killing at least 11 people, including two disabled students and two teachers in a passing bus. A second bomb exploded in the northwestern city several hours later, wounding four people. The bombings came amid continued bloodshed across Pakistan, with residents of a rural tribal region reporting 29 deaths from a suspected U.S.