PAKISTAN: Suspected suicide bombing kills 11 in Pakistan

It was not clear who was behind the explosion, but Pakistan has been braced for a fresh outburst of sectarian violence during the Islamic month of Moharram, when the country's Shi'ite minority mourns the death of one of their sect's heroes. A suspected suicide bomb attack near a mosque in the Pakistani city of Peshawar killed at least 11 people on Saturday (January 27), most of them police officers, a senior provincial government official said. Blood and flesh were splattered over the narrow lane where the blast took place, and there was broken glass from shop fronts underfoot as police scoured the site. A Reuters journalist saw the bodies of three victims being carried through a hospital by men chanting anti-government slogans. City administrator Ghulam Ali said 11 people were killed and 20 wounded in the blast near the city's largest mosque. Another official, North West Frontier Province Chief Minister Mohammad Akram Khan Durrani, said he feared the death toll would rise. While the evening blast occurred just metres away from Qasim Ali Khan mosque, the largest Sunni mosque in the city, it was also close to a Shi'ite community centre, which had just been visited by the police caught in the explosion. The Peshawar blast came a day after one in the capital Islamabad. A suicide bomber killed himself and a security guard when he was stopped at the side entrance of Islamabad's Marriott hotel, which is frequented by foreign diplomats and businessmen. A police officer said up to 10 of the dead in the Peshawar attack were police, including two senior officers. A power cut in the city made it difficult to gather all the details in the confusion, officials said.

ITN Source | January 28, 2007

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