As he walked away, the bag exploded, throwing him to the ground with a shattered foot and leaving shoppers dead and wounded all around him.

In a macabre new tactic, Taliban militants have begun paying children to plant lethal bombs in Pakistani cities. Ishaq, who comes from a poor family that barely survives on the money his father earns from house-painting jobs, had been working at the Orakzai bus stop of the city’s main Terah Bazaar, earning a few rupees a day by helping people to load lorries and buses.

Two weeks ago a man with a moustache but no beard approached him and offered him the note to leave a blue plastic bag in a crowded area between several shops.