Suicide bomb in Pakistan mosque kills about 50

A suicide bomber blew himself up during Friday prayers at a packed Pakistan mosque, leaving around 50 dead and scores wounded in one of the bloodiest recent attacks in the nation.

It came as US President Barack Obama vowed to wipe out terrorists from Pakistani safe havens, warning Al-Qaeda was plotting catastrophic new attacks, as he unveiled a sweeping new Afghan war strategy.

The bomb on the weekly Muslim day of rest exploded in Jamrud, a town in the restive northwest Khyber tribal region that is located on a key road used to ferry supplies to Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Blood-soaked caps, shoes and shirts lay around the flattened mosque, where dazed survivors looked on as rescue workers dug bodies out of the rubble.

"People may have taken three or four dead bodies on their own, but from hospital reports the total dead recorded is 48 and the wounded are 153," Fida Mohammad Bangash, a senior administration official in Khyber, told AFP.

Administration officials earlier said that more than 50 people died.

Only two minarets were left intact at the mosque, which is frequented by tribal police and paramilitary officers fighting against the Taliban and other Islamist militants in Khyber, as well as local residents.

Pakistani security officials said they suspected Friday's bombing was to avenge operations against Taliban fighters and other Islamist militants aimed at securing NATO supplies into Afghanistan.

"We are investigating the suicide attack from different angles and one of the points under consideration is whether this can be in reaction to the operation against the banned militant outfits in the area," Bangash said.

Fifteen security personnel were killed in the attack, 20 tribal police were wounded and two paramilitary forces wounded, Bangash said.

"The whole of the mosque collapsed and only two pillars remain. People were crying," said Waheed Khan, a tribal policeman who was on guard duty across the road at the time.

"I haven't seen such devastation in my life," he told AFP.

"At the same time that the imam said 'Alluh Akhbar God is greater, the suicide bomber exploded. It was a huge explosion. Even the vehicles standing outside the mosque were damaged."

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani "strongly condemned the suicide attack" and vowed the perpetrators would be brought to justice, according to separate government statements.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband also condemned the attack and the "grievous loss of life."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

It was the deadliest bombing in Pakistan, the frontline state in the US-led "war on terror," since 60 people died in a suicide truck bomb at the five-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last September.

Extremists opposed to the Pakistani government's decision to side with the United States in its "war on terror" have carried out a series of bombings and other attacks that have killed nearly 1,700 people in less than two years.



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