PESHAWAR: Two persons were killed and 17 injured on Monday after a powerful blast ripped through a bazaar in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal district bordering Afghanistan, a police official said. 
The blast took place at Razmak bazaar in North Waziristan district, police official Wahab Wazir said, adding that police rushed to the scene of the blast to shift the injured to the district hospital in Miran Shah town. 
“Explosive materials were strapped to a motorcycle parked at the main bazaar which exploded with a big bang, leaving two persons dead on the spot and another 17 wounded,” Wazir told Arab News, adding that it had also smashed the windowpanes of nearby shops. “Ten of the injured were in critical condition.”
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur condemned the blast in a statement, saying that “targeting innocent citizens was a tragic and condemnable act.”
While no group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who have carried out several attacks in Pakistan’s northwestern KP province in recent months. The TTP seeks to impose its strict version of Islam in Pakistan. 

Pakistani forces were able to effectively dismantle the TTP and kill most of its top leadership in a string of military operations from 2014 onwards in the province’s tribal areas, driving most of its fighters into neighboring Afghanistan. 

Pakistan initially witnessed a spike in militant violence in its two western provinces, KP and Balochistan, in November 2022 after the Pakistani Taliban called off their fragile truce with the state. The group has since then intensified its attacks in Pakistan. 
On August 18, two policemen were killed and three others were injured in two separate attacks by militants in the province.
Islamabad blames the latest surge in violence on neighboring Afghanistan, saying that its government provides shelter to TTP fighters who launch attacks inside Pakistan from Afghan soil. Kabul denies the allegations and has reassured Islamabad repeatedly that it would not not allow its soil to be used for militant activities. 
Pakistan has frequently threatened to carry out cross-border attacks against alleged militant targets in Afghanistan, infuriating Afghan leaders who have warned Islamabad against carrying out any such offensive.