On 18 September 2009, a

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

car bomb A car bomb, bus bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles. Car bombs can be roughly divided ...

ing killed at least 39 people in

Usterzai Usterzai is an administrative unit known as the "Union Council" of Kohat District in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Kohat District has 2 tehsils, Kohat and Lachi. Each tehsil comprises a certain number of union councils. The ...

, Pakistan. At 11am on 18 September 2009, a suicide car bombing took place at Kacha Pakha

bazaar A bazaar () or souk (; also transliterated as souq) is a marketplace consisting of multiple small Market stall, stalls or shops, especially in the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa and India. However, temporary open markets elsewhere, suc ...

village market at a busy

intersection In mathematics, the intersection of two or more objects is another object consisting of everything that is contained in all of the objects simultaneously. For example, in Euclidean geometry, when two lines in a plane are not parallel, their i ...

, badly damaging Hikmat Ali hotel, as well as a restaurant and shops, causing some to collapse. It happened in a Shia

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

area of Usterzai, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, five and a half years after the

war in northwest Pakistan The insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also known as the War in North-West Pakistan or Pakistan's war on terror, is an ongoing armed conflict involving Pakistan, and Islamist militant groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jundall ...

began. The attack killed at least 39 people and injured another 54, most of whom are believed to have been members of Pakistan's Shia minority, who are often targeted by extremists among the majority

Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...

s. A group calling itself Lahskar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi says it carried out the attack, in revenge for the killing of a prominent religious leader, Maulana M Amin, in Hangu, NWFP, three months earlier. They are believed to be linked to Taliban-linked Sunni

supremacist Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nation, culture, ...

group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

References

2009 murders in Pakistan 2009 building bombings 2000s crimes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 21st-century mass murder in Pakistan Car and truck bombings in 2009 Hotel bombings in Pakistan Attacks on restaurants in Asia Attacks on shops in Asia Building bombings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Islamic terrorism in Pakistan Islamic terrorist incidents in 2009 Kohat District Lashkar-e-Jhangvi attacks Marketplace attacks in Pakistan September 2009 crimes September 2009 events in Pakistan Suicide bombings in 2009 Suicide bombings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Suicide car and truck bombings in Pakistan Terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2009 Violence against Shia Muslims in Pakistan {{terrorism-stub