A powerful car bomb exploded in a market near a minority Shiite Muslim place of worship in northwestern Pakistani town of Parachinar on Friday, killing at least 22 people and wounding over 50 others in the attack claimed by the Taliban.

Mushtaq Ghani, a spokesman for the provincial government, said the attack took place near Parachinar's Shiite mosque, which is located near the Noor Market. TV footage showed people transporting the victims in ambulances and private vehicles.

In a statement, the Pakistan army confirmed the bombing, saying it dispatched a helicopter along with a team of medical doctors to provide help to the victims and evacuate wounded persons from Parachinar, capital of Kurram tribal district, to hospitals in other cities for treatment.

The attack comes after a wave of militant violence killed 130 people across Pakistan in February, unnerving citizens who had been emboldened by improving security and prompting a military crackdown.

"It was a car bomb, the car was parked in the market but it is not clear yet whether it was a suicide blast," Shahid Ali Khan, a local administration official, told AFP.

The blast was so powerful it also damaged vehicles and nearby shops, according to government administrator Zahid Hussain. He said authorities have announced an emergency and rescuers are transporting the dead and wounded to nearby hospitals.

Parachinar is a key town in the Kurram tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and it has been racked by sectarian violence in the past. The region was also once a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban and Sunni militant groups. Although the army says it has cleared the Kurram region of militants, violence has continued there.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for Friday's attack, but Lashker-e-Jhangvi, a banned Sunni sectarian militant group has been blamed for previous such attacks in the region, where Shiite Muslims are in the majority.

Hussain said Shiites were apparently the target of the latest attack.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a faction of the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban, swiftly claimed the attack in a message sent to AFP.

The group was also part of the wave of attacks which shook the country in February, claiming responsibility for a suicide bomb in Lahore which killed 14 people.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned Friday's blast, saying it was a "duty" to seek the "complete annihilation" of terrorism in Pakistan, and ordering assistance for local authorities.

Shiite leaders blamed the "failure of security installations", according to Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, chief of a Shiite political organization.

"Terrorists crossing dozens of check posts and carrying out attacks puts a question mark over the progress of security institutions," he said.

"We have 22 dead bodies here at the hospital and 57 injured, including women and children," Moeen Begum, a surgeon at the hospital in Parachinar, told AFP.

Sabir Hussain, a senior doctor at the local hospital, told AP the facility received 15 bodies and 55 wounded persons, and some of them were listed in critical condition.

Angered over the attack, some residents were seen chanting slogans against the government.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan condemned the attack and asked authorities to provide the best possible treatment to the victims.

Friday's blast came hours after sate-run media said Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain had signed a bill removing the last hurdle for the revival of military courts to try terrorism suspects.

The development came days after Pakistan's Senate and National Assembly separately passed a constitutional amendment to extend the practice, which has been in place for two years. A previous 2015 amendment established the military courts for a two-year mandate that expired in January.

The controversial tribunals so far decided hanging of 12 people and ordered the executions of 149 more.

Rights activists have slammed the move, calling it part of a "seriously flawed counter terrorism strategy".

The move to send terror suspects to military courts came after the December 2014 Taliban attack on an army run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed 154 people — mostly schoolchildren.

Pakistan at the time also lifted its moratorium on the death penalty and it has executed over 400 people, but most of them were linked to routine murders.

February's assaults also included a suicide blast at a Sufi shrine in Sindh province which killed 90 people and was claimed by Daesh.

The wave of violence dented optimism after the country appeared to be making strong gains in its decade-and-a-half long war on militancy, with analysts speaking of a militant resurgence.

Pakistan's powerful army launched a crackdown and temporarily closed the border with Afghanistan, which it accused of harboring the militants who had carried out the attacks.

Parachinar was the location of the first major militant attack in Pakistan in 2017, a bomb in a different market which killed 24 people in January and was also claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

Kurram is one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal districts which are governed according to local laws and customs.

The district is known for sectarian clashes between Sunnis and Shiites, who make up roughly 20 percent of Pakistan's population of 200 million.