Pakistan bombing kills at least 50
By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer
SHERPAO, Pakistan - Pakistani police raided an Islamic school and arrested seven students Friday, hours after a suicide bomber killed at least 50 people inside a mosque packed with holiday worshippers at the home of the former interior minister.
Suspicion for the blast, which left bloody clothing, shoes and pieces of flesh scattered across the house of worship, focused on the pro-Taliban or al-Qaida militants active near the Afghan border, where the attack occurred.
It was the second suicide attack in eight months apparently targeting Aftab Khan Sherpao, who as interior minister was deeply involved in Pakistan's efforts to combat the Taliban and drive out al-Qaida.
Sherpao was praying in the mosque's front row at the time of the attack, but he escaped injury.
"Yes, I'm fine," Sherpao told the Associated Press in a brief telephone interview. One of his sons was wounded, and witnesses said the dead included police officers guarding Sherpao.
President Pervez Musharraf condemned the blast and directed security and intelligence agencies to track down the masterminds, the state Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
After the bombing, dozens of police and intelligence agents raided an Islamic school in the nearby village of Turangzai and arrested seven students, some of them Afghans, two police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The officials declined to say whether the raid was connected to the attack.
The blast deepened the sense of uncertainty in Pakistan ahead of Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, which Sherpao, as head of the Pakistan Peoples Party-Sherpao, is contesting.
The bombing turned a prayer service crowded with hundreds of people celebrating the Islamic holy day of Eid al-Adha into a scene of carnage at the mosque inside Sherpao's residential compound in Sherpao, a village 25 miles, northeast of the city of Peshawar.
The bomber was in a row of worshippers when he detonated the explosive, provincial police chief Sharif Virk said.
"There was blood and body parts everywhere. There was panic everywhere. People were running. Some people were injured in the chaos," said Iqbal Hussain, a police officer in charge of security at the mosque.
District Mayor Farman Ali Khan said between 50 and 55 people were killed, and authorities were collecting information on their identities. Local police chief Feroz Shah said over 100 were wounded.
The hospital in Peshawar was wracked with chaos as the wounded arrived in pickup trucks, ambulance sirens wailed and the injured screamed for help. The bomb contained between 13 and 17 pounds of explosives and was filled with nails and ball bearings to maximize casualties, according to the head of the bomb unit at the scene.
A bulldozer was brought in to help volunteers dig graves for the dead next to the mosque.
Minhaj Khan was digging a grave for the dismembered body of Shah Jee, a 28-year-old father of two from the village.
"He was a poor laborer. Now who will look after his family?" he asked. "It is nothing but extreme cruelty to kill people on such a holy day for Muslims."
Hussain, the police officer, said everyone entering was forced to pass through a body scanner and was searched with metal and explosive detectors. "We don't know how the bomber got in," he said.
Hamid Nawaz, the current interior minister, insisted there was no security lapse.
"All possible care had been taken, there was no lapse as such ... but such an incident can happen at such a gathering," Nawaz told Aaj TV.
After the blast, Sherpao's house was protected by about a dozen police and paramilitary troops.
As interior minister, Sherpao oversaw one of Pakistan's civilian spy agencies, police and paramilitary forces involved in operations against militants along the Afghan border.
He was a longtime supporter of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party before defecting and joining the government after the last parliamentary elections in 2002. He left office last month as a caretaker government took over ahead of the January elections.
Top figures in the government have been repeatedly targeted. In April, Sherpao was slightly wounded by a suicide bomber, and Musharraf himself narrowly escaped assassination in two bombings a few days apart in December 2003.
Taliban and al-Qaida fighters have extended their influence over tracts of Pakistan's volatile northwest in the past two years and in recent months have launched numerous suicide attacks, usually targeting security forces and their families.
The army says the most recent attacks could be retaliation for a military operation against militants in the Swat valley, where it claims to have killed about 300 militants since last month.
The violence came as Pakistan struggled to emerge from months of political turmoil.
Musharraf recently declared emergency rule for six weeks — a move he said was necessary to combat rising Islamic extremism, but was widely seen as a ploy to prolong his own presidency. Thousands of his opponents were rounded up and Supreme Court justices fired.
On Friday, police re-arrested prominent opposition lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, according to his son, Ali Aitzaz. Aitzaz Ahsan, who had been at the forefront of a lawyers' protest movement, was released Thursday for three days for the holy day, but was detained again after just one day.
Pakistan bombing kills at least 50 - Yahoo! News
