At least 20 people were killed and over 40 injured in a bomb blast in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan border on Saturday morning, a Pakistan army spokesman said.
The IED bomb was planted under a sack of fruits at a vegetable and fruit market in far flung Parachinar -the only Shia dominated tribal area in Sunni majority Pakistan- and detonated with a remote control, Major General Asif Ghafoor said.
Army troops backed by helicopters were called in to join the rescue and relief operations, Ghafoor added.
The injured, many of them critically, were taken to the local hospital, where shortage of doctors and equipment forced the administration to airlift several of them to Peshawar in army helicopters.
Amid ongoing military operations in the tribal region, more than 4500 suspected terrorists and over 500 troops have been killed mainly in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency areas, in clashes and landmine blasts since June 2014, according to statistics released by the interior ministry. The army operation also displaced nearly a million tribesmen from North Waziristan, of them around 30 per cent have managed to return.