18 hurt as blasts hit CD shops
Bureau Report

PEHSHAWAR—A homemade bomb ripped through a music shop in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday injuring 18 people, police said. The blast occurred in the Musafir CD Centre located in a busy shopping centre Hussian Plaza in the city, police and local shopkeepers said.
“The roof of the shop collapsed after the blast which injured eight people and some of them are in a serious condition,” Peshawar police chief Abdul Majeed Marwat said. Another police officer at the nearby hospital said he had counted 17 people injured. The owner of the targeted shop had been receiving threats from suspected militants to close his “un-Islamic” business, the shopkeepers said. Islamic militancy is spreading in the deeply-conservative province where militants, emulating the ultra-orthodox Taliban who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, strive to impose their own strict brand of Islam. At least 30 CDs shops and video centres have been destroyed when explosive devices, planted by unknown criminals, went-off in Batkhela Bazaar, agency headquarters of Malakand Agency. Political authorities and Malakand Levy officials said Tuesday that the explosions had razed to ground about 30 shops and video games centres including six in Shaan market, 14 in Zaman Plaza and eight in Marhaba market.