Pakistani Mosque Blast Kills 9, Injures 30
A bomb attack on a mosque in militant-infested northwest Pakistan killed at least nine people and wounded around 30 more as it ripped through Friday prayers, police and medics said.
Hundreds of people were coming out of the mosque when the blast occurred, police said, adding that the bomb had been planted inside the building near the town of Nowshera.
"We have received nine dead bodies and 28 injured, there is one child among the dead," Abdul Hameed Afridi, head of the main Lady Reading hospital in Peshawar, the main city in the region, told Agence France Presse.
Confirming the fatalities, senior police officer Mohammad Qureish Khan put the number of wounded at 33.
"It was a planted bomb, we are investigating whether it was a remote control device," he said.
"It was timed device, it exploded in the mosque," senior minister Bashir Bilor told reporters after visiting the site.
The mosque is located in a shrine named after Muslim saint Akhund Panju Baba in Akbar Pura town on the outskirts of Nowshera.
Several hundred people offer weekly congregation at the mosque, police said.
The worshippers were coming out of the mosque after saying their Friday prayers when the bomb exploded.
The blast follows a suicide car bombing on Thursday in a densely populated area of Hangu, which lies some 150 kilometers south of Peshawar and borders the troubled tribal belt along the Afghan border.
Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants launch daily attacks across northwest Pakistan and the tribal belt that Washington has branded the most dangerous place on Earth.
More than 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since government forces launched an offensive against militants in a mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
The bombings have been blamed on terror networks linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Source: Agence France Presse
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