Several dead in attack on Pak mosque

27 Mar 2009


AMRUD/PAKISTAN: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a packed mosque in northwest Pakistan at Friday prayers, killing 48 people and wounding dozens
in one of the deadliest attacks in the nuclear-armed nation.

The bombing took place on the weekly Muslim day of rest in the town of Jamrud in the restive Khyber tribal region, which is located on a key road used to ferry supplies to Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.

It came just hours before US President Barack Obama was to unveil a new offensive against terror havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, aiming to deal a death blow to Al-Qaeda more than seven years after the September 11 attacks.

"Forty-eight bodies have been pulled out of the debris and many others may still be trapped under the rubble," Tariq Hayat, the top administration official in Khyber, told AFP by telephone.

"More than 70 people were wounded. There may be many more dead," he said.

"The bomber was present inside the mosque and blew himself up when Friday prayers began," Hayat said.

"The entire building collapsed," a top security official said, referring to the temporary mosque, which had been set up by local police and paramilitary troops who have a camp in the surrounding area of remote, mountainous Khyber.

It was the deadliest bomb blast in Pakistan, a 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.

US officials say northwest Pakistan has become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan and have since regrouped to launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.

Pakistani security officials said they suspected Friday's attack was to avenge ongoing security operations against Taliban fighters and other Islamist militants in Khyber's Barra area to secure NATO supplies into Afghanistan.

The bulk of supplies and equipment required by NATO and US-led forces battling a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is shipped through Pakistan, and the fabled Khyber pass is the principal land route.

A spate of militant attacks across Pakistan from extremists opposed to the government's decision to join the US-led "war on terror" after the September 11, 2001 attacks, has killed more than 1,600 people in less than two years.

The unrest has fanned international fears about deteriorating stability in the nuclear-armed Islamic republic, where Obama has said extremists -- like those in Afghanistan -- pose a grave threat.

To win a war aides said was "adrift," Obama is to dispatch 4,000 extra troops to train the Afghan army, on top of 17,000 deployments already authorized, in a bold move in defiance of critics who fear a quagmire.

Obama also will send hundreds more civilian officials into Afghanistan and stump up billions of dollars of extra aid to help Pakistan secure its democracy, senior administration officials said.

"It is a clear, concise, attainable goal, and that goal is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda in its safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan," one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.