News

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — Taliban militants blew up 16 shops selling music and DVDs in northwest Pakistan overnight, police said Thursday.

"An improvised explosive device planted in a market selling music and DVDs in Takhtbhai town blew up 16 shops overnight," local police official Fazal Mabood told AFP, blaming Taliban insurgents.

There were no casualties in the attack in the town, northwest of Peshawar, because the market was closed at the time of explosion, he added.

Islamist militants have bombed scores of entertainment shops across the country's northwest in recent years, charging that music and films are contrary to the teachings of Islam.

In the Swat valley, the government last month signed a deal with a pro-Taliban cleric to enforce Islamic law after Islamist hardliners waged a nearly two-year insurgency to enforce their repressive interpretation of Islam.

In Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, militants fired at least 20 mortar rounds which landed in open spaces late Wednesday.

"Militants tried to hit a police station and other buildings but the rockets missed the targets and landed in open spaces on the outskirts of Peshawar," a local police official, known only as Hakimullah, told AFP.

Peshawar is close to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal zones, which border Afghanistan and where government forces have been battling pro-Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militant... >>>