Suicide attack kills 38 in Pakistan mosque

by Ammad Waheed

(December, 21,Charsadda, Pakistan, Sri Lanka Guardian) At least 38 people were killed on Friday in a suicide bombing at a northwest Pakistan mosque, where a former interior minister was offering Muslim Eid festival prayers with worshippers, officials said.

Intelligence officials said as many as 50 people may have died but this could not be immediately confirmed by police.

Another 40 people were wounded in the blast. Body parts and shoes were scattered around the mosque floor covered in pools of blood, witnesses said.

Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, who was interior minister in President Pervez Musharraf's recently dissolved government and who is now running in January 8 parliamentary elections, was the likely target of the attack at the mosque in his home village, the government said.

Sherpao, who heads a small pro-Musharraf political party, said he was unharmed but his son was injured. Sherpao had been injured in April in another suicide attack at a public meeting in Charsadda.

The suspected bomber, sitting in a middle row among the worshippers, detonated his bomb as prayers ended and people gathered around the politician to greet him, a police official who asked not to be named, said.

"At the moment we have 38 confirmed dead and 40 wounded," Federal Secretary of Interior Syed Kamal Shah told Reuters.

"We feel that Sherpao was the target. There are so many mosques in that area. Why did the bomber select that mosque for the attack?"

The district is about 20 km (12 miles) from Peshawar, the provincial capital.

"It was a huge explosion," said Mohammad Mukhtiar, a worshipper in the mosque.

There have been a rash of suicide attacks blamed on Islamist militants since a military assault on the Red Mosque, a militant stronghold, in Islamabad in July.

More than 800 people have been killed in the ensuing violence across the country, with about half of them killed in suicide attacks.

Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, cited growing militancy as a main reason behind his imposition of emergency rule on November 3.

Musharraf, who said hours after lifting emergency rule last weekend that the government had "broken the back" of the militancy, condemned Friday's attack.

(Agencies)