Blast causes carnage in Pakistani mosque

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bomber detonated explosives yesterday in a crowded mosque in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 50 people and leaving many victims buried in the rubble of the building, officials said.

The attack came just hours before President Obama, in Washington, introduced a new strategy to fight terror and extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The blast hit in the Khyber tribal agency, a semiautonomous zone near the Afghan border that has been plagued by Islamist insurgents, criminal gangs, and tribal conflicts.

It is a busy cross-border corridor and was a major avenue for U.S. military supplies into Afghanistan until a series of attacks on convoys and truck depots last year made the route too dangerous to navigate.

"As the prayer leader said 'God is great,' the bomb went off with a big bang," said Nadir Shah, a paramilitary soldier who was treated for head wounds in the nearby city of Peshawar, according to the Associated Press. "I felt it was the end of everything."

Extremists have often killed scores of Pakistani civilians in attacks. Mosques and funerals have been targeted before, but yesterday's blast struck many as plumbing new depths of evil.

"What kind of holy war is this?" said Asfandyar Wali, head of the secular ruling party in the northwest. "Only poor people have been killed."

The attack was the most lethal bombing in Pakistan since a suicide truck bomb devastated the luxury Marriott Hotel in the capital of Islamabad last September, killing 54 people and injuring more than 200.

Officials said the death toll from yesterday's blast could rise to more than 70. More than 100 were wounded, medical officials said.

Pakistan has been negotiating with various Islamic extremist groups that often operate and attack inside Pakistan. Afghan and U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of assisting other such groups that focus their violent attacks across the border in Afghanistan.

Both groups use the tribal zones as sanctuaries and staging areas for attacks.

Officials said many of those killed or wounded yesterday were members of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force in the tribal zones.

The mosque that was targeted is in Jamrud, near the main highway leading to the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. It is close to a major Frontier Corps barracks.

"We are struggling to find the survivors," Tariq Hayat, the top government administrator for Khyber, told a Pakistani television station.

Many victims of the blast were rushed to hospitals in this large provincial capital, about 10 miles away. The government declared an emergency at all area hospitals.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, visiting the city of Quetta, condemned the bombing. He told reporters that terrorism was a "regional problem" and that all area governments must improve cooperation in fighting it.

On the other hand, in a sign of Pakistan's ambivalence about U.S. military efforts in the region, Zardari said he hoped Obama's policy review would take into account Pakistan's "ground realities."

Such references by Pakistani officials generally mean there is widespread hostility among Pakistanis to antiterrorist operations, especially cross-border bombing raids by unmanned U.S. drones.

The raids often kill civilians as well as suspected insurgents, spurring citizen protests.