Mosque bomb: Death toll rising

[bemildred]

Islamabad - An explosion, apparently caused by a suicide bomber, ripped through a Shiite Muslim mosque in an eastern Pakistani city during Friday prayers, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens of others, officials said.

Police said that more than 100 people - and possibly as many as 500 - were inside the mosque in the centre of Sialkot city at the time of the blast, which triggered a riot by outraged worshippers.

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He said that according to witnesses, a man with a briefcase entered the mosque shortly before the blast and the briefcase had exploded. "Based on this account, I think it's a suicide attack," the police chief said.

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The attack comes less than a week after Pakistan arrested a top al-Qaeda suspect, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, believed to be behind the kidnapping and beheading in 2002 of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and two failed assassination attempts on President General Pervez Musharraf that left 17 other people dead in December 2003.

News24(South Africa)

[Darranar]

1. Many killed in Pakistan mosque blast

A human bomber has killed at least 18 people in a mosque packed with worshippers and wounded more than 40 during Friday prayers in the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot.

Nisar Ahmad, police chief in Sialkot, said on Friday that more than 100 people were inside the mosque in the city centre at the time of the blast, and according to his initial estimates, at least 18 people had died.

Another official at the police control room in Sialkot, however, said that more than 500 people had been inside the mosque.

"It was a suicide attack," Ahmad told reporters. "It was a massive explosion which was heard several miles around."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BD1DD04B-9DA3-41B1-A0F9-B200E4F3C5E4.htm