A suicide attack targeted a Pakistani military convoy on Thursday, killing five people in the northwestern Swat valley where the army put down a Taliban uprising last year.
It was the deadliest attack in the district since February and underscored lingering insecurity in a region that until a major military operation last year was largely outside government control and paralysed by Taliban militants.
The bombing came as the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers in Islamabad held their first substantive talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks -- which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani militants -- torpedoed their peace process.
Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,500 people across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.
Anwar Khan, 40, who runs a general store in Mingora, said he was outside asking someone not to park in front of his shop when the bomb exploded.
"I felt something very hot pierce my shoulder. A red, bloody piece of flesh hit my right cheek and after that I passed out," he told AFP by telephone after having shrapnel extracted from his shoulder in hospital.
The bomber detonated in a busy street outside a bus terminal, littering the road with burnt out vehicles and sparking a frantic rescue effort.
Police said five people were killed, including two women and a couple visiting from Pakistan's central province of Punjab, in a normally busy street outside a bus terminal while a military convoy was driving past.
"Two legs of the suicide bomber were found," Swat police chief Qazi Ghulam Farooq told AFP.
Television footage showed volunteers carrying at least one body away from the site, while others frantically pulled at the twisted doors to rescue two victims sitting in the front seats of one non-military vehicle.
Hospital officials said 47 people were wounded, including four women and seven children. Most of them had fractured bones and head injuries.
A military spokesman said the army had been the target and that two security force personnel were wounded.
"The target were army vehicles," he told AFP by telephone.
Mingora is 125 kilometres (80 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad and the main town in Swat, a mountain valley of enormous natural beauty that was once a popular tourist destination for Pakistanis and Westerners.
For two years the Taliban paralysed much of the Swat district by promoting a repressive brand of Islamic law, opposing secular girls' education and beheading opponents, until the government ordered in thousands of troops.
In April 2009, Pakistan launched a major offensive in the neighbouring districts of Buner and Lower Dir, then advanced through Swat.
After heavy fighting that displaced an estimated two million people, the military declared the region back under army control last summer and tentative efforts have begun to kickstart development and revive the economy.
Many of the displaced have now returned to their homes to rebuild their lives, but skirmishes, threats and tensions have remained.
On May 1, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a busy market in Mingora, killing three people and wounding 12 others. Last February, a similar attack killed nine people.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
