PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque on Friday, killing five people in Khyber Agency, officials said.
Three loyalists of local militant group Lashkar-i-Islam and two civilians were killed in Akakhel town in the Tirah valley of Khyber district, local administration official Bakhtiar Khan told AFP.
"A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Lashkar-i-Islam mosque. Three members of Lashkar-i-Islam and two passers by have been killed in the attack. Nine people have been wounded in the incident," Khan told AFP.
The attack came exactly three weeks after a similar suicide bombing at another Lashkar-i-Islam mosque in Tirah killed 22 people and wounded another 20 after Friday prayers.
Khyber is a haven for militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban and has been the scene of fighting between the army and rebels, prompting at least 18,000 people to flee their homes in October last year.
A spokesman for Lashkar-i-Islam, which is run by Mangal Bagh and which has links to militants and criminal gangs, blamed Pakistan's main umbrella Taliban faction for the attack.
Akakhel is a restive town where the rival Lashkar-i-Islam, Tehreek-i-Taliban and other local militiamen are known to compete for influence.
"Tehreek-i-Taliban sent this suicide bomber to attack our mosque but our guards identified him and opened fire at him," Lashkar-i-Islam spokesman, Hazrat Omer, told AFP by telephone.
"At that point he blew himself up and killed five people. The dead included three of our members. Seven people have been injured of which six are our colleagues," he added.
The scene of Friday's attack is 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the site of the March 2 bombing, in which most of the dead were from Lashkar-i-Islam.
COMMENTS (2)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
Muslims killing Muslims
Wink wink nod nod
Big fish is allowed to eat small fish, so to speak.
Why is it that suicide bombers seem to prefer blowing people up while they are praying or why they are mourning? Why is it that the Pakistani people will rise up and protest anything associated with America or NATO but remain mute in the presence of an ongoing slaughter of their people by Muslim religious fanatics? Go figure.