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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (CNN Pakistan News English) -
A bomb exploded near the
office of a regional government
official in the often restive
northwestern Pakistani city of
Peshawar early on Thursday,
police officials said, but there
were no immediate reports of
casualties.
A wall of the district
coordination officer's building
collapsed after the blast, which
was heard throughout
Peshawar, the last major city on
the route to Afghanistan.
Peshawar is also not far from
Mohmand, the district where a
strike by NATO-led forces at the
weekend killed 24 Pakistani
soldiers and plunged often
uneasy relations between
Washington and Islamabad to
new lows.
Taliban militants have often
launched suicide attacks in and
around Peshawar in their
campaign to topple the
Pakistani government for its
support of the U.S.-led war
against militancy.
The army has launched a series
of offensives against the
Pakistani Taliban but have failed
to subdue the group, which is
close to al Qaeda and is blamed
for many of the suicide
bombings across Pakistan, an
unstable, nuclear-armed U.S. ally.
Pakistani Taliban officials have
said the group is holding
exploratory peace talks with
the Islamabad government.
Since the weekend strike in
Mohmand, Pakistan has
announced it will boycott an
international conference on the
future of Afghanistan in
Germany next week, depriving
the talks of a central player in
efforts to bring peace to
Afghanistan.
Pakistan has labelled that attack
as a deliberate act of
aggression, although that has
been categorically denied by
senior U.S. military officials.