PESHAWAR, May 15: Twenty-two people, including two women, were killed and 30 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a restaurant in the congested part of the old city here on Tuesday, police and hospital officials said.

The bomb exploded with a big bang at around 12.55pm at the Marhaba Restaurant, situated on the ground floor of a four-storey building, opposite the historic Mahabat Khan mosque on the Naz Cinema Road.

The explosion completely destroyed the hotel and badly damaged nearby shops and buildings.

It was not clear what motivated the bomber to strike at a restaurant frequented by locals working in a nearby jewellery market and the city’s biggest teaching hospital.

The owner of the restaurant, his brother and son were killed in the suicide attack.

Witnesses and police said that restaurant owner Sadruddin was an Uzbek of Afghan origin and he was a supporter of former Uzbek warlord Abdur Rashid Dostum whose posters adorned walls of the restaurant.

“It was definitely a suicide bombing,” chief investigator Fayaz Toru told Dawn, adding that initial investigations indicated that the incident bore all the hallmarks of a suicide bombing.

Toru said that police had found nuts and bolts from the bombing site – things normally used in suicide bombings.

Some wire services quoted Provincial Police Chief Sharif Virk as claiming that police had also recovered a suicide note that warned of a similar fate for those who “spied for the United States”.

But Mr Virk and other police investigators distanced themselves from the report, saying that all they had recovered which could be linked to the suicide bombing, were legs of the bomber.

“We are yet to reach any conclusion but this can be said with some degree of certainty that it was a reaction to the prevalent geo-political scenario in the region,” he told Dawn.

SSP Investigations Qazi Jamilur Rehman, who is leading the investigating team, also denied the report that any suicide note had been found.

“There is no suicide note or any writing on the legs of the bomber,” he said.

Investigators and security officials also denied a report of wire services that the suicide bombing could be linked to the arrest of a close relative of slain Taliban Commander Mullah Dadullah.

Human flesh and parts of bodies were found scattered all over the place. Most of the bodies were beyond recognition because of the severity of the blast.

Bodies of victims and the injured people were taken to the nearby Lady Reading Hospital, barely 200 metres from the place of the blast.

An emergency was declared in the hospital to deal with the situation.

“I was in the kitchen when I heard a big explosion and fell unconscious,” said Muslim Shah, a cook at the restaurant injured in the blast, told this scribe.

NWFP Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam said that the explosion could part of a series of such incidents due to prevailing situation in tribal areas and Pakistan’s front-line role in the US-led war on terror.

COMPENSATION: Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani strongly condemned the incident, and announced a compensation of Rs100,000 each for those killed and Rs50,000 for those wounded in the incident.

Traders of Peshawar have announced a three-day mourning for those killed in the blast. They have also announced holding of protest rallies to demand better security in the provincial capital.

This was the third suicide bombing in the province this year.

A suicide bomber had struck a public meeting addressed by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao in his native town Charsadda, some 40 km to northeast of Peshawar, on April 28, killing 32 people.