PESHAWAR: A remote-controlled bomb blast killed 35 people and wounded more than 60 others on Tuesday in a tribal region of northwest Pakistan Tuesday in the deadliest such attack in months, officials said.

The explosion took place in a market in Jamrud, one of the towns of the troubled Khyber tribal region, which also used to serve as the main supply route for Nato forces operating in Afghanistan.

“The total number of deaths in the blast is 35 while 69 people were wounded, and of them the condition of 11 is critical,” a senior administration official, Shakeel Khan Umarzai, told AFP.

Another top official in Khyber, Mutahir Zeb, said the target of the attack was not immediately clear.

“According to initial information, it was a remote controlled device planted in a passenger pickup van,” he said.

There were about 120 bomb attacks in Pakistan in 2011 and the same number in 2010 according to an AFP tally – an increase from 2009, but far below the violence of 2009 when there were more than 200 bomb blasts.