Deaths in Peshawar car bomb blast
At least five people have been killed in a car bomb attack near the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
Police said that the car exploded outside a cinema on a busy road in the city on Friday.
Al Jazeera understands that five people were killed in the blast, but a Pakistani news channel said six people had been killed.
A senior police official, quoted by news agencies, said only that there had been "several casualties".
"The blast occurred in front of a cinema in Khyber bazaar. Casualties are feared," Ghafoor Afridi, another senior police official, was reported by the AFP news agency as saying.
The cinema building was badly damaged and up to 10 nearby shops were destroyed in the blast, one witness said.
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Islamabad, said: "The pictures we are seeing suggest that casualties will rise ... as people succumb to their injuries."
He noted there were no military complexes in the area.
"This is seemingly an attack against again Pakistanis, ordinary Pakistanis," he said.
Military campaign
The blast came as Pakistani troops intensified their campaign against the Taliban in the Swat valley, a district within the North West Frontier Province, of which Pehsawar is the capital
The military claims to have gained control of most major towns in Swat and has said it is closing in on Mingora, the valley's main city.
"They believe they will be taking the city [of Mingora] in the the next 34 to 48 hours," said Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, who travelled to the war zone, escorted by the Pakistani military, early on Friday morning.
"The army says it has secured large areas and that it has hit the militant movement very strongly, but the fact that we are still escorted by helicopter gunships ... indicates that there is still a fear of ongoing action," he reported.
The military also claims to have cleared the Taliban from mountain hideouts in Peochar.
Humanitarian concerns
But the army's advance has come at a cost.
An estimated 1.9 million people have fled the fighting in Swat and its neighbouring districts since the army launched its offensive last month.
More than 160,000 are staying in camps just south of the battle zone, while the rest have been taken in by relatives.
The United Nations appealed on Friday for $543m to ease the "incredible suffering" of the nearly two million refugees.
The world body said the money was urgently needed to fund some 165 projects drawn up by UN agencies and aid groups to assist civilians.
"The scale of this displacement is extraordinary in terms of size and speed and has caused incredible suffering," Martin Mogwanja, the acting UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan, said in a statement.
"We are calling for generous support from the international community."
US pressure
The Pakistani effort to halt the Taliban follows urging from the US, which is itself battling Taliban fighters in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Some have expressed concern that a planned US troop build-up in Afghanistan could further destabilise Pakistan.
But Admiral Mike Mullen, the US joint chiefs of staff chairman, said that efforts were under way to avoid that.
He told the senate foreign relations committee in Washington that he believed the upcoming increase of 21,000 US troops in Afghanistan was "about right" to tackle the Taliban there.
Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - Deaths in Peshawar car bomb blast
