PARACHINAR: At least 14 people, including women and children, were killed when a passenger van was hit by a roadside bomb blast in the Godar area of the Kurram Agency on Tuesday.

Officials and medics said that majority of the victims were women and children as five women and four children were among those killed in the blast. Four personnel of Khasadar Force, who were on census duty, also lost their lives.Dr Sabir Hussain, medical superintendent of the Agency Headquarters Hospital, Parachinar, confirmed 14 fatalities in the blast.

Nine others were injured, he said.

The political administration officials told Dawn that the van wasgoing to the Sadda area from Godar when it was targeted by a remotecontrolled explosive device near the Patukot area.

The blast destroyed the van while killing and maiming sev-eral passengers travelling in it. A woman died on the spot and 13 others succumbed to their injuries in the hospital. Officials said that the Khasadar Force personnel were going to Sadda in connection with census duty.

Military airlifted nine critically injured people, including two soldiers of Khasadar Force, to Peshawar in a helicopter.

Later, funeral prayers for the victims were offered at the central Imambargah in Parachinar and the bodies were sent to their native towns for burial.

Talking to Dawn, Shabbir Sajidi, president of the Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen`s Kurram agency chapter, said that had authorities taken notice of nine previous bomb attacks in the agency, the latest blast would not have taken place.

He called upon the prime minister and the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to take notice of the attack and punish those responsible for it. This is the third major incident of terrorism to take place in Kurram agency this year. Together, the three blasts have claimed more than 60 lives besides injuring scores of people.

On March 31, a car bomb went off near main imambargah in Parachinar, leaving 23 people dead and several others injured.

Another powerful blast ripped through the busy vegetable market in the city on Jan 21, killing 25 people and injuring more than 80 others.

A spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the militant Pakistani Taliban group, said the explosive device had been intended to target the country`s Shia minority and workers in the area carrying out a census, according to Reuters. `Our target was the Shia community and census team in the area, said the spokesman.