Bomb attack kills 50 in mosque: official

PESHAWAR: A bomb exploded in a mosque during the main Friday prayers, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 100 others in the tribal district of Khyber, an official said.

The bomb exploded as hundreds of people had packed into the mosque in the town of Jamrud, 25 kilometres from Peshawar.

"At least 50 people have been killed and more than 100 were injured. The bomb blast took place inside the mosque," Mutahar Zeb, the top administrative official of the semi-autonomous district, told AFP.

"There are body parts, there is mutilated flesh so we can't say whether it was a planted bomb or a suicide attack," he added.

Sayed Ahmed Jan, a senior administrative official, initially said seven people died, but with more than 50 people wounded he warned there were fears that the death toll could rise.

Iftikhar Khan, an official at the Hayatabad Medical Complex in Peshawar told AFP that 100 wounded people had been rushed there alone.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011