A man was caught planting a bomb at a crowded bus station by police on Thursday. The incident occured in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar just a day after Taliban gunmen attacked a nearby university, leaving 21 people dead.
"We caught a man planting a bomb at Peshawar Bus Stand," Rokhan Zeb, a senior police official, informed AFP.
The senior police official reported that a bomb disposal team safely defused the device, adding that approximately 2,000 people were nearny when the plant was found.
"A big disaster has been averted due to police alertness, had the bomb exploded it could have killed and wounded scores of people," Zeb said.
Analysts have said Wednesday's attack on the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda reveal that a national crackdown has failed to curb extremism and militants can hit targets at will. Charsadda is located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Peshawar, .
The shooting in which gunmen targeted students and staff with automatic weapons and grenades, threatened to destroy a fragile sense of security that had been partially restored in the area. In 2014, an assault on a Peshawar school left more than 150 people dead in Pakistan's deadliest ever extremist attack.
