Suicide attack kills 8 in Pak mosque
A suicide attacker blew himself up at a Shia Muslim mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar yesterday, killing at least eight people and wounding 20 others, officials said.
Earlier Pakistani troops abandoned an outpost near the border with Afghanistan yesterday after receiving threats from Islamic militants who overran a nearby fort a day earlier, according to an intelligence official and a militant spokesman.
But an army spokesman denied the outpost at Saklatoi in South Waziristan had been abandoned. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the contradictory claims.
The explosion happened days before the start of the Muslim religious festival of Ashura, a traditionally tense time when minority Shias mourn the death of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson in the seventh century.
"It was a suicide attack," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP.
A witness said the attacker opened fire before detonating himself just inside the mosque while around 100 people were worshipping there.
"I saw a young man push the security men at the gate and then run in firing. Then there was a huge explosion and lots of smoke," Ghulam Abbas, an official at the mosque, told AFP.
"There were loud screams and there are body parts strewn around the gate. The electricity went out, dead bodies are inside and many people were injured," he added.
Worshippers staged angry protests outside the mosque after the blast, witnesses said.
"There were men, women and children inside, people were screaming. Police have cordoned off the area. The walls were splattered with blood and body parts," said Waqar Hussein, a worshipper.
Residents said the mosque was under construction and mainly frequented by lower-income residents of the city.
Police officer Intiaz Khan said that a man "apparently blew himself up at the gate of the Imambargha (Shia mosque), killing at least five people and injuring over 20."
The attack further heightens instability in Pakistan ahead of elections on February 18, which were delayed by six weeks following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
The country has been on edge since the start of the holy month of Moharram, which has in previous years seen a surge in sectarian violence between the minority Shia and majority Sunni communities.
At least 10 people were killed and about 50 wounded on Monday when a bomb fixed to a motorcycle exploded in Karachi as President Pervez Musharraf visited the southern city.
There have now been four deadly bombings in Pakistan this year, including a suicide attack in the eastern city of Lahore a week ago that killed 16 policemen and four civilians.
More than 800 people have been killed in attacks -- mainly suicide bombings targeting the security forces -- in Pakistan over the past year, making 2007 the deadliest for militant violence in the country's history.
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