A suicide bomb ripped through a mosque packed with worshippers in northwest Pakistan Friday, killing 38 people and wounding dozens more in the deadliest such attack in more than two months, AFP reported.
The bomb exploded at the mosque in the remote, mountainous village of Hayagai Sharqai in Upper Dir, which borders the district of Swat, where the military has focused its blistering air and ground assault against the Taliban.
Police said the attack occurred during weekly Muslim prayers, which convene Friday afternoon and generally see mosques filled with people.
Malik Naveed Khan, police chief of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), said 50 were wounded in the explosion.
"We fear the death toll may rise to 45 because people are still trapped under the debris. Rescue work is under way," Atif-ur-Rehman, the top government official in Upper Dir, told AFP by telephone.
"The mosque courtyard is littered with blood and human flesh," he added.
Rehman said the bomber entered the mosque shortly before prayers but that as he tried to push his way into the centre of the crowd, people around thought he looked suspicious and tried to pounce on him.
"During the scuffle he detonated himself," Rehman said.
"Villagers, even women, came out of their homes and they're having to identify their dead relatives through their clothes," he added.
Police official Ataullah Khan said 32 dead had been identified and put the number of wounded at 70, but said rescue workers were still pulling out dead bodies from what he called the "severely damaged" mosque.
Bombers regularly target mosques in Pakistan, where more than 1,900 people have been killed in a wave of extremist bombings across the country since government troops besieged gunmen in a radical Islamabad mosque in July 2007.
On March 27, a suicide bomber in Jamrud, also in northwest Pakistan, killed about 50 people in one of the deadliest such mosque attacks at Friday prayers in the country.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's blast, but NWFP has been rocked by a surge of bombings since the military assault against militants began on April 26, heightening fears of a growing backlash.
Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani announced that the battle in Swat was turning in the military's favour.
"The tide in Swat has decisively turned: major population centres and roads leading to the valley have been largely cleared of organised resistance by the terrorists," he was quoted as saying in a statement.
The United States has strongly supported the operation, which was launched under pressure from Washington and amid warnings that Islamist militants posed an existential threat to the country and were plotting attacks on the West.
US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke however expressed concern Friday about another possible challenge for Pakistani security forces.
The arrival of more US troops in Afghanistan could lead to a huge influx of Taliban fighters into Pakistan, threatening to destabilise the country, Holbrooke told reporters in Islamabad.
"I don't want to be alarmist here, but I'm predicting some massive influx," he said.
The renewed offensive against Taliban in Afghanistan could lead to rebels crossing the border to seek refuge in Pakistan, as many did when Afghanistan's Taliban government fell in 2001, Holbrooke added.
In other violence in Pakistan on Friday, three soldiers were killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb in South Waziristan, a military official said.
Civilians again streamed out of homes in Swat on Friday, following evacuation orders from the military and taking advantage of a curfew break ahead of possible operations concentrated in their villages, officials said.
The military launched its offensive in the northwest six weeks ago after Taliban fighters advanced to within 100 kilometres of Islamabad, in violation of an earlier deal to put the region's three million people under sharia law in exchange for peace.