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Deadly Blast at Fruit Market Shatters Calm in Pakistan’s Capital

Pakistani men comforted one another on Wednesday after a bombing in Islamabad killed at least 22 people and injured 100.Credit...Farooq Naeem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In the deadliest attack on the Pakistani capital in more than five years, a powerful explosion ripped through a crowded market in Islamabad on Wednesday, killing at least 22 people and suggesting that, after a long stretch of relative calm, the city was back in the firing line of the country’s militants.

The bomb, which the police said had been hidden in a crate of guava and possibly triggered by remote control, went off in the early morning at a wholesale fruit market on the edge of the city. Video on television showed the devastating aftermath — charred debris, shattered carts and bloodstained fruit — while witnesses spoke of seeing dismembered limbs and bodies flung high into the air. At least 100 people were reported to have been injured.

It was the deadliest assault in the capital since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel that killed 54 people in September 2008, one of a barrage of attacks that year and the next in which Islamist militants waged their terrorist campaign directly on Islamabad. For many shocked residents, the market bombing on Wednesday recalled that time of siege. But the question of which group planted the bomb — and to what end — became mired in a fog of claims and counterclaims throughout the day.

Immediately after the attack, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban said that the group had nothing to do with it. He criticized the violence against civilians — the group’s stock in trade since its formal emergence in 2007 — and insisted that the Taliban were observing a cease-fire until Thursday in support of peace talks with the government.

“Attacks on public places and targeting innocent people is regrettable and un-Islamic,” the spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, said in a statement released to the Pakistani news media.

Instead, a man identifying himself as a spokesman for a little-known separatist group, the United Baluch Army, claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The group was virtually unheard-of until Tuesday, when it also claimed responsibility for an attack on a train that killed 14 people and wounded 40 more as it passed through central Baluchistan Province. The spokesman, who gave his name as Mureed Baluch, made the claim for both bombings by telephone to several Pakistani journalists.

But then the Interior Ministry took the unusual step of trying to discredit the group’s claim — all the while declining to say who it thought was responsible.

“It is not only surprising, but ridiculous that the United Baluch Army has claimed responsibility for the attack,” a ministry spokesman said in a text message to reporters. “According to government and intelligence agency investigations, the root of this incident can be found elsewhere.”

The statement concluded that “whoever is responsible” would be brought to justice.

Baluch separatists have been fighting for independence from Pakistan for about eight years, accusing the central government of ignoring their sprawling, poverty-stricken province. But the United Baluch Army is not among the main militant groups, which until now have generally limited their attacks to Baluchistan Province.

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Survivors combed through the debris after an explosion at a vegetable market in the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan.CreditCredit...Anjum Naveed/Associated Press

The conflicting claims and emergence of shadowy groups come at a tense time in Pakistan, and come against a background of fluctuating relations among the civilian government, the Taliban and the military.

The Taliban peace talks — Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s initiative to end years of militant bloodshed — have been undermined by a spate of Taliban-style suicide attacks over the past five weeks that have killed at least 63 people, including a senior judge. Most of the attacks were claimed by Ahrar-ul-Hind, an apparent Taliban splinter group that first claimed responsibility for an attack on March 3, a bombing at an Islamabad courthouse.

The attacks throughout the cease-fire have been taken as either an attempt by the Pakistani Taliban to negotiate through force, or as evidence that the group, always a relatively loose confederation of militants, might be fracturing into violent internal divisions.

Reports from the tribal belt indicate sharp disagreements between militants from the Mehsud tribe, who used to lead the Pakistani Taliban and are said to favor talks, and the militant group’s recently chosen leader, Maulana Fazlullah, who reportedly opposes them. Further, there have been growing reports of violence within the Mehsud faction itself.

“The militants are not a monolith. There are different factions and not all of them agree on peace talks,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, the director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies. “A lot of foreign intelligence agencies have also entered into the subversive element of militancy.”

The talks began in earnest on March 26, and since then have drawn sharp criticism from opposition leaders, like Bilawal Bhutto Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples Party, who accuse Mr. Sharif of ceding too much ground to the militants.

Last week, the Interior Ministry announced the release of 19 Taliban prisoners from the Mehsud tribe. Government officials say more prisoners will be freed this week.

Mr. Sharif’s position is further complicated by his fragile relationship with the country’s military leadership. Plans to mount a military offensive against the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan, which appeared imminent in February, have been shelved.

Some army commanders have privately indicated they believe the time has come to fight, not talk, with the Taliban.

The army and Mr. Sharif are also arguing over the fate of the former military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges in the Supreme Court. The army is bitterly opposed to the trial, which it views as a challenge to its authority. Mr. Sharif’s government insists the case must go ahead.

The crisis has overshadowed Mr. Sharif’s state objective of rebuilding the faltering economy. In a glimmer of hope on that front, the World Bank said on Wednesday that Pakistan’s finances were “gradually improving” and that the country was on track to meet major fiscal targets.

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Declan Walsh from London.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Deadly Blast at Fruit Market Shatters Calm in Pakistan’s Capital. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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