Twenty-three die in double bomb blasts set off by 'terrorist beasts'

A suicide bomber was behind the deadliest blast, which occurred just before dusk in a crowded market area. Police said the target was apparently officers watching over a rally by members of a political party against power cuts in the city.

Police officers and protesters were among the 22 people killed and more than 30 injured, said police chief Liaqat Ali Khan.

The rally was being held by the Jamat-e-Islami party, an Islamist grouping that is sympathetic to many of the goals of the Taliban and regularly criticises army operations against them.

"The terrorists are beasts," said provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain. "Their aim is just to shed blood."

Earlier, a bomb exploded outside a school run by a police welfare foundation, killing a young boy aged between five and seven and leaving 10 other people injured, including five children.

The school raises money to help families of police officers.

Taliban and al-Qaida militants based in the Afghan border region – who are fighting the Pakistan police and army – have carried out hundreds of attacks over the last three years. Mosques, schools and markets – typically with an association with security forces, the government or their supporters – have often been hit.

Peshawar has been one of the hardest-hit cities because it lies close to the border area.

Two blasts over the weekend in the nearby Kohat tribal region killed about 50 people, most of them refugees lining up to register for food and other aid.

Also yesterday, suspected Taliban militants in the north west detonated two bombs that destroyed a pair of oil tankers along a vital route used to supply Nato and US forces in Afghanistan.

No-one was injured, but the fire also engulfed a flatbed truck and nearby shops in the Takhta Beg area of the Khyber tribal region, local official Iqbal Khan said.

Taliban militants and ordinary criminals frequently attack vehicles along the supply route that runs through the famed Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. The US and Nato say their Afghan operations have felt limited impact, but they are establishing alternative routes.

Afghan security forces arrested nine members of a terrorist cell and seized a substantial amount of explosives, foiling a plot to stage suicide bombings and other attacks in Kabul, the country's intelligence service said yesterday.

The arrests mark the second time in recent weeks that the security services claim to have prevented major attacks on the capital, a result they say of better training and use of informants.

Intelligence service spokesman Saeed Ansari said four of the suspects were arrested while travelling in a vehicle in the city's eastern district, while five others were picked up at an Islamic school in Kabul.

He said security forces also confiscated six rifles, two machine guns, two rocket-propelled grenades, 440 pounds of explosives, six suicide bomb vests and a vehicle.

n Soldiers based at Europe's largest military base in Yorkshire are being sent out for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The deployment of dozens of troops from the Royal Dragoon Guards, who are based at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire, was under way yesterday.

Al-qaida leaders killed in 'significant blow' against terror group in iraq

The two top al-Qaida figures in Iraq have been killed in a joint operation by US and local forces, the Iraqi prime minister and US military officials said yesterday.

The deaths of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri were touted by America's top general in Iraq as possibly the most significant blow to the terror group since the beginning of the insurgency and a sign of the growing strength of Iraqi security forces.

But the news, which comes as US forces prepare to end combat operations in the country, belies the resiliency of Sunni terror groups that have shown their ability to launch new and deadly attacks despite repeated strikes to their leadership.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki announced the killings at a news conference in Baghdad and showed reporters photographs of their bodies.

The US military said they were killed in a night raid on their safe house on Sunday near Tikrit, the home town of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. An American helicopter crashed during the assault, killing one US soldier, the military added.

Al-Masri was the shadowy national leader of al-Qaida from Iraq, which he took over after its Jordanian-born founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a US air strike in June 2006.

Al-Baghdadi is the self-described leader of the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).