A bomb blast killed around 40 worshippers attending prayers yesterday at a mosque in a remote area of northwest Pakistan, a senior official in the area said.
“The death toll is 40. We have no idea as yet how many have been wounded,” said Atif-ur-Rehman, a top government administrator in the Upper Dir district of North West Frontier Province.
Earlier yesterday, police arrested suicide bombers in Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s interior minister said, as US special envoy Richard Holbrooke consulted the country’s leaders on what needs to be done once the army wipes out the Taliban in Swat valley.
Roadblocks have multiplied in both the capital and Rawalpindi, where the army is headquartered, over fears of attacks in retaliation against the Swat offensive.
The military says more than 1,200 militants and 90 soldiers have been killed since the army swung into action in late April, while the militants have carried out bomb attacks in Lahore, and the northwestern cities of Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan.
“The people of Swat have realized that the entire misery which we are facing today, it is because of the Taliban, because of the terrorists, who are not only enemies of the country but enemies of Islam,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.
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