Pakistan ? A car bomb devastated a busy street in this northwestern Pakistani city on Friday, killing 29 people, injuring scores more and unnerving a region already dangerously on edge following the attacks on India’s commercial capital.

Further adding to the tension, a suspected U.S. missile strike reportedly killed three people in a stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaida near the border with Afghanistan.

Escalating violence is destabilizing Pakistan’s northwest just as the country faces accusations from archrival India that the gunmen behind the carnage in Mumbai last week were trained in Pakistan and steered by militants based there.

Neither the motive nor the culprits behind the Friday evening blast in Peshawar were clear. But provincial government chief Haider Khan Hoti said “external forces” could be to blame — a comment understood in Pakistan to mean India.