Al Jazeera News :At least 13 people were killed – including two women and a child – in a suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan on Monday, described as a “revenge attack” by a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban. The bomber blew himself up outside a district court in the Shabqadar market area of Charsadda district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. Charsadda in northwest PakistanPolice said 26 people were also wounded in the explosion – with six in a critical condition. The blast took place about 30km from the region’s main city of Peshawar. Inspector Ali Jan Khan, from the Shabqadar police station, said the attacker was attempting to enter the court. “The suicide bomber was interrupted by two security personnel, which prompted him to blow himself up outside the court,” he told Al Jazeera. Asfandyar Khan, a hospital worker, told Al Jazeera that two women and a female child were among the dead.Medical teams were dispatched to the scene, but the death toll is expected to rise, he said. A splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, saying it was a revenge attack for the recent execution of a former Pakistani commando who shot dead Punjab province’s governor in 2011. “The Pakistani courts give decisions against the laws revealed by Allah, and convict and hang innocent people,” the group’s spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said in an emailed statement.The assassinated governor Salman Taseer had sought to reform Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. Charsadda is near the Mohmand tribal district, one of seven regions along the border with Afghanistan, where the Pakistani military has launched a major offensive against fighters from al-Qaeda and the Taliban. “Charsadda is the first point of entry for any attacker coming out of Mohmand,” said Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from the capital Islamabad.
