Tuesday's blast targeting a hotel run by Afghan refugees in Peshawar, near the Taliban-infested northwestern border with Afghanistan, has intensified the internal strife facing military ruler President Pervez Musharraf.

"Security has been further tightened across the country," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP.

Provincial law minister Malik Zafar Azam said investigators were "examining the possibility that the hotel was used as a place to spy on Taliban activities and gather information about them."

A message taped to the attacker's severed leg that warned so-called spies for US forces in Afghanistan would suffer a similar fate "points to that," the minister said.

The shabbily-dressed attacker "entered the hotel carrying a sack of explosives on his head," Azam said.

"He came to the counter and asked for food and the man asked him to sit at the restaurant outside where he would be given bread. The attacker walked out and he blew himself up," he added.

Peshawar police chief Abdul Majid Khan Marwat said that a second message was taped to the other leg, saying: "Those who kill pure and praying people meet the same fate."

The message was signed the "Beast of Khurasan," he told reporters. Khurasan is an ancient name for Afghanistan.

Both messages were in Pashto, the language spoken by ethnic Pashtuns who inhabit the Pakistan-Afghan border area and also by Taliban militants fighting a bloody insurgency in Afghanistan.