The anxious wives were on the phone again to their husbands in the Pakistani garrison town of Rawalpindi, a terrorist target where daily routine can turn to horror in an instant.

"She's very worried," Abdul Habib said after putting down the receiver while visiting a friend's carpet shop close to the site of a bombing which left 35 people dead.

Not far from the carpet shop, Junaid Anwar Baig's wife had also phoned.

"She calls two or three times a day," said Baig, 62, who sells copper ornaments and other handicrafts.

"She always says: 'Be careful. Don't move around.'"

Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked extremists have carried out a two-year campaign of attacks that have killed more than 2,400 people in Pakistan, which has a population of around 167 million.

The indiscriminate killing, beamed into living rooms by television channels broadcasting round the clock, is cultivating a state of fear and uncertainty across Pakistan.

"The whole nation is in a state of trauma," said Naima Hassan, a psychologist who has counselled victims of the attacks.

There have around 300 blasts since the wave of violence began. Last week in northwestern city Peshawar 118 people -- many of them women and children -- died in a market bombing that was the country's second-worst attack.

"The problem is this: you can't stop it," said Habib, 57. "Anything can happen at any time. Mentally, everybody's upset."

That feeling of helplessness is common, said the psychologist.

"They feel that they are unable to cope with this terrorism," she said.

Along Mall Road, a wide, busy street in front of the carpet shop and Baig's business, they have already had a lot to cope with.

In the latest attack to strike this city adjoining the capital Islamabad, a bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up close to people queuing for their salaries outside a Pakistani bank and hotel, police said.

The bomb site, still blocked by police, is about 200 metres (yards) from army headquarters where last month 10 gunmen kept up a nearly 24-hour siege that left 23 people dead and deeply embarrassed the military.