“Whoever did it in the holy month of Ramadan cannot be a Muslim,’’ said Saleem Khan, who said that in the aftermath of the blast people ran over him to escape the scene. “It is the cruelest thing any Muslim would do,’’ he said from his hospital bed in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, where he was being treated for his injuries.
The mosque is in Ghundi, a village in the Khyber tribal region, a part of Pakistan’s tribal belt that is off-limits to foreigners and considered too dangerous for nonlocal Pakistanis to visit. Much of the nonlethal supplies heading to US forces in Afghanistan pass through it.
As it has in other areas of the border during the last three years, the Pakistani Army has carried out several operations against militants in Khyber, with limited success. It has funded and supported the creation of tribal militias in some areas, which have also struggled against the brutality of the Taliban.
More than 300 people were at the mosque, a local administrator said. “All the evidence we have gathered confirms that it is a suicide attack,’’ said another local official.
The blast killed 48 people, according to Khalid Mumtaz, a local government official. At least 85 were wounded.
TV footage showed prayer caps, shoes, and green prayer mats scattered across a blood-splattered floor, while ceiling fans were twisted and walls blackened. Men comforted a young boy who wept as he held his hand to his heart.
A top provincial official said several elders of the Maddo Khel tribe who were in the mosque could have been the targets. He said the tribe had been campaigning against the militants in the area, with the backing of the government.
He did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
