A suicide car bomb exploded near a crowded market in northwest Pakistan killing at least 39 people Friday morning.

Dilwar Bangish, a district police chief, said that the car bomb detonated shortly after 11 a.m. (local time) near the Kacha Pakha bazaar in the Kohat District in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

Ali Hassan of the district police said that the target was a Shia Muslim neighborhood and most of the victims were Shiite. Another 54 were injured, also mostly Shia Muslims. The residents had received threats from Taliban in the past, he said. It is not yet clear why the bomb was detonated in a Shia community but most of the victims were Shiite.

Victims were trapped when several shops and buildings collapsed in the blast.

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia and is at a pivotal location at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia. It has a 1,046-kilometer coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east, and China in the far northeast. Tajikistan also lies very close to Pakistan but is separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor.