Bombs kill at least 11 in northwest Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Bombs destroyed an Internet cafe, wrecked a bus carrying disabled children and spread panic through Pakistan’s main northwestern city Saturday, killing at least 11 people in a day of carnage across the militancy-plagued region.

An apparent U.S. missile strike annihilated a Taliban raiding party mustering to cross into Afghanistan, officials said, while Pakistani troops claimed another 47 kills in their bid to retake the Swat Valley.

Violence is engulfing Pakistani territory along the Afghan border as American and allied forces crank up the pressure on al-Qaida and Taliban militants entrenched in the forbidding and barely governed mountains and valleys.

The U.S. and other nations are pouring in billions of dollars in aid and military assistance to prop up the pro-Western government in Islamabad, which on Saturday sought to allay concerns that its nuclear weapons could fall into extremist hands.

The first of two bombs to explode in Peshawar on Saturday was hidden in a car and devastated a street busy with traffic, shoppers and worshippers heading to mosques to pray.

Television images showed several vehicles burning fiercely and a stricken white-and-green bus that had been dropping disabled children at their homes around the city.

All eight students still on board were injured, one seriously, along with the driver and an assistant, medics and police said. Four other children and seven adults were killed, and dozens more people injured, they said.

Safwat Ghayur, a senior police official, said one of several buildings badly damaged by the blast was an Internet cafe — a favorite target for violent Islamist extremists in Pakistan who consider the Web a source of moral corruption.

Ghayur said the cafe had received several threats and was attacked recently by gunmen.