At least four civilians and six soldiers were killed and around 22 people injured Friday in two separate bomb attacks in north-western Pakistan, officials and aid workers said, dpa reported
Alleged militants detonated a bomb during Friday prayers in a mosque in the Pushtakhara area of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
"Three people have been killed and up to 22 injured in the attack," said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the province's information minister. "Steps are being taken to stop such attacks and provide complete security to the people."
Later one of the critically injured persons died at Hayatabad Medical Complex, taking death toll to four, health officials said.
A spokesman of the private Edhi rescue service, Mujahid Khan, told the German Press Agency dpa that the bomb was planted in the main courtyard of the mosque and it went off when the worshippers started coming out of the building.
Ijaz Ahmad, a senior police officer, said that 1.5 kilograms of explosive material were used. An witness told local Dunya TV that the bomb was hidden in bundle of old clothes and detonated at the end of the prayers.
TV footage showed cracks in the walls of the mosque and debris scattered in the inner courtyard and main prayer hall.
The injured were moved to the Hayatabad Medical Complex and Lady Reading Hospital, the two main medical facilities in the city.
Police and law enforcement personnel cordoned off the area and started a search operation in the vicinity, but no arrests had been made. Earlier on Friday, a roadside bomb hit a paramilitary vehicle in the restive tribal region along the Afghan border, killing one officer and five soldiers.
Three members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps were also injured in the bombing in Orakzai, a known hotbed of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
Major Fazalur Rehman, a corps spokesman, said the soldiers were on patrol when they were hit by the bomb.
Khalid Khan Omarzai, the top civilian administrator in neighbouring Kohat district, confirmed the incident and casualty toll.
Military and paramilitary troops have been fighting militants in Orakzai since March when an operation was launched to uproot al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists using the area to train and launch attacks across the country.
According to officials, hundreds of militants and dozens of soldiers have been killed in the fighting and large parts of the district have been cleared of insurgents.
But militants remain holed up in the mountainous areas of the upper Orakzai region, occasionally attacking security forces.
The latest killings coincided with the important meeting of the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue in Washington, which the Obama administration is trying to use to enhance Islamabad's capacity to deal with deteriorating security.
The United States would provide an additional 2 billion dollars in foreign military aid from 2012 to 2016 to help Pakistan meet its defence needs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an address to the meeting on Friday, which was broadcast live on Pakistani television