Carnage in Pakistan market attack

At least 25 people have been killed and many injured in a suicide car bomb attack at a village market in north-west Pakistan, police say.

The explosion is said to have taken place at a busy intersection close to the garrison town of Kohat.

Most of the dead are said to be members of the Shia Muslim minority. The area has a history of sectarian tension.

The village is also close to the Orakzai tribal region, a stronghold of the Taliban's present chief.

Hakimullah Mehsud took over as chief of the Pakistani Taliban - a Sunni group - after his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed by a US missile strike.

But there has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attack.

Shia village

Astarzai village, where the blast took place, is a Shia-majority area and many Shia Muslims run businesses there.

The car bomb was detonated close to a hotel owned by a Shia Muslim businessman.

ANALYSIS BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad The Taliban operate widely in Kohat and had at one point warned barber shops in the area to stop giving, what they described as, un-Islamic haircuts. Pakistan's army has since carried out major operations against the Taliban in the North West of the country and last month a US drone strike killed the Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. But there are signs that the Taliban is trying to reassert itself under its new leader Hakimullah.

Police officials said that many people had been injured by the explosion and they expect casualty figures to rise considerably.

Witnesses told the BBC the blast was so powerful it nearly demolished one building in the area.

"Dozens of shops were destroyed. Their roofs caved in and many people were trapped under the debris," a local police official told the AFP news agency.

At the time of the explosion, the area was reported to be thronged with shoppers buying supplies for the weekend and the Muslim Eid festival, which is expected to start on Monday.

Astarzai lies 18km west of the town of Kohat, where a bomb was detonated on Thursday wounding at least six people.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that Sunni Taliban militants in the area have carried out frequent attacks on minority Shias.

Sunni Muslims account for around 80% of Pakistan's population and are the dominant group in the tribal areas, although Orakzai has significant Shia numbers.

Pakistan's army has been bombing Taliban hideouts in Orakzai for the past month, correspondents say.

There were reports of more aerial bombings in the area on Friday morning, shortly before the bomb attack.

The last month has seen a series of major attacks on targets across the NWFP.

On 30 August a suspected suicide bomb attack in Pakistan's north-western Swat valley killed at least 14 police recruits and injured others.