At least 18 people were killed on Sunday in a bomb blast at a bakery in Nowshera, police and government officials said, an attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban. More than 28 people were injured in the explosion in the garrison town of Nowshera, which lies around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Peshawar.
Provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP the blast in the entrance to the bakery sparked a huge fire, which has now been brought under control.
Local administration official Zakaullah Khattak told AFP the death toll from the attack stood at 18, with 28 injured.
The attack came two days after a US drone strike which officials believe killed Pakistan's al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the network's most feared operational leaders.
The chief of the Nowshera bomb disposal squad, Tanvir Ahmed, said he believed the bakery attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.
He said officers had found what was thought to be the bomber's head at the blast site, along with ball bearings and steel pellets, though the Pakistani Taliban, who claimed the attack in a phone call to AFP, gave a different account.
"It was a remote-controlled bomb which was planted by our men," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP in a phone call from an undisclosed location. Nowshera police chief Abdullah Khan said the dead included three children.
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