Suicide attack kills five outside Pakistan mosque: official

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Agence France-Presse

An aged Pakistani woman waits to get free food distributed at a local shrine in Islamabad, Pakistan on Thursday, March 22, 2012. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash) AP Photo

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque on Friday, killing five people in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, a Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold on the Afghan border, officials said.
 
Three loyalists of local militant group Lashkar-i-Islam and two other civilians were killed in Akakhel town in the Tirah valley of Khyber tribal district, administration official Bakhtiar Khan told AFP.
 
"A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Lashkar-e-Islam mosque. Three members of Lashkar-e-Islam and two passers by have been killed in the attack. Nine people have been wounded in the incident," Khan told AFP.
 
The attack came exactly three weeks after a similar suicide attack at another Lashkar-i-Islam mosque in Tirah killed 22 people and wounded another 20 after Friday prayers.
 
Khyber is a haven for militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban and has been the scene of fighting between the army and rebels, prompting at least 18,000 people to flee their homes in October last year.
 
A spokesman for Lashkar-e-Islam, which is linked to Islamist militants and criminal gangs, blamed Pakistan's main umbrella Taliban faction for the attack.