At least 60 people were on killed when a fiyadeen (suicide bomber) blew him up while the Friday’s Id-ul-Zuha prayers were on at the Jama Masjid at Sherpao village in Charsadda district of northwest Pakistan in a bid to eliminate former Pakistani minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao. While the minister escaped unhurt in the attack, his son and nephew were among the scores of wounded. 

This was the second time this year that Sherpao was targeted by a suicide bomber. Earlier this year, on April 28 when Sherpao was addressing a meeting at Charsadda, a suicide bomber blew him up killing 28 people and injuring 40 others. When contacted, Sherpao expressed ignorance regarding who was behind Friday’s bomb attack, but agreed that it was related to the previous attack on him as he is running for parliament in general elections next month.

The injured worshippers were rushed to the hospital in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, while the police have sealed off the area and began gathering evidence.

Although no terrorist group has owned up the responsibility for the attack yet, it is being believed that Aftab Sherpao was the target of the attack as he is one of Pakistan’s leading opponents of Islamic militants. Sherpao is a close ally of the Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and as the interior minister he has been the highest civilian anti-terrorism official in the country till last month when the national parliament was dissolved.

Eye-witnesses said that the blast was so powerful that it split the limbs off worshippers who had gathered at the mosque for the Eid-al-Adha prayers and splashed the Jama Masjid’s walls and floors with blood and pieces of flesh. According to the provincial police chief Muhammad Sharif Virk, the bomber was among the people offering the Eid prayers. He said that the militant was standing in the second row behind the former interior minister.

Today’s bomb blast in the mosque is being considered the deadliest assault in Pakistan since October, when two suicide bombers killed 139 people at a parade in honor of the Opposition Pakistan People’s Party chief Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan after eight years of self exile.

It was also the fourth to hit Pakistan since just last Friday, a day before Musharraf lifted a controversial state of emergency. Meanwhile, the bloodshed caused by Friday’s blast has raised the phantom of a gory run-up to controversial national elections scheduled for January 8 next. 

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