A suspected suicide car-bomber killed 49 people on Friday in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in an attack that the government said underscored the need for an all-out offensive against the Pakistani Taliban.
There was no claim of responsibility but Interior Minister Rehman Malik said "all roads are leading to South Waziristan," referring to the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban in the northwest.
"One thing is clear, these hired assassins called Taliban are to be dealt with more severely," Malik told reporters in Islamabad.
"We think we have no other option except to carry out an operation in South Waziristan," he added, while declining to say when that might happen.
The blast hit a shopping area close to the city’s main Khyber Bazaar and ambulances rushed to the scene, said local police official Asghar Hussain.
"We have declared an emergency in the hospitals," local administration chief Sahibzada Mohammad Anis told reporters..
"The bomb was planted in a car parked in the market," said Hussain.
It was not immediately clear if it was a remote-controlled device or a suicide attack.
"We are investigating whether it was a suicide blast or the device was planted in the vehicle," the minister told reporters.
Peshawar is the main city in the northwest and has been a frequent target of militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who are waging a violent insurgency against the Pakistani state.
On September 26 a car bomb killed six people on a road leading to the main army cantonment in Peshawar.
Pakistan’s umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) organization has threatened to unleash a wave of attacks on government targets to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack.
Pakistan, on the frontline of the United States’ war on Al-Qaeda, has been hit by a wave of bombings that have killed more than 2,100 people across the nuclear-armed country over the past two years.