79 people, including women and children, where killed, and 180 others wounded in a bomb attack in a busy market in Pakistan’s insurgency-hit southwest, officials said Sunday.

79 people, including women and children, where killed, and 180 others wounded in a bomb attack in a busy market in Pakistan's insurgency-hit southwest, officials said Sunday.

The powerful bomb in a water tanker ripped through a packed bazaar in Hazara town, an area dominated by Shiites on the outskirts of Quetta -- capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan province -- at around 6:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Saturday.

"We have recovered more dead bodies from the debris of a collapsed building. The death toll has now risen to 79," AFP quoted senior Quetta police official Wazir Khan Nasir as saying.

Quetta city police chief Zubair Mehmood said the water tanker, which officials said was packed with some 800 kilograms (1,750 pounds) of explosives, was placed near a pillar of a two-storey building, which collapsed in the blast.

We fear that several people have been trapped inside. Rescue work is ongoing but I see very little chance of their survival," Mehmood said.

While Nasir considered that “the Shiite community was the target,” of the bombing, a spokesman for the banned extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the bombing.