A suicide attacker struck at the headquarters of a Taleban-style religious group Thursday, killing only himself but wounding 30 others, officials and witnesses said. It was the first suicide bombing in Pakistan since a new government took office a month ago and embarked on peace talks aimed at curbing the power of Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants along the Afghan border. Thursday's attack appeared, however, to be the result of a years-long turf war between local militant religious groups rather than an attempt to destabilize the fledgling peace process. The attacker blew himself up at the main office of an organization called Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, government official Purdil Khan told The Associated Press. The official said some among the 30 injured were in critical condition. The blast occurred in Bara, a troubled town in the Khyber tribal region about 15 km (10 miles) from Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province. The targeted group is led by Maulana Namdar, a hard-line cleric associated with a local militant leader who has been involved in recent heavy fighting with rivals. Amin Khan, who attended the gathering, said the attacker struck just after Namdar had finished a sermon and appealed for donations for jihad. He said a youth stood up and pretended that he wanted to donate a pistol but blew himself up just a few meters (yards) from Namdar. The cleric was safe but three of his fellow religious leaders were hurt, Amin Khan told AP by telephone. Only one of three explosives-filled sections of the attacker's suicide belt had detonated, he said. Bara township and the surrounding area have seen repeated bursts of deadly violence between two rival religious groups. Namdar and other hard-liners have sought to impose in the area Islamic strictures similar to those laid down by Afghanistan's Taleban regime before it was driven from power by a 2001 US-led invasion. The rival group includes many refugees from Afghanistan and is influenced by Sufi mysticism. Authorities expelled the leaders of both groups from the area last year in a failed attempt to tamp down their deadly turf war. The conflict has contributed to the lawlessness of the frontier region, where a six-year effort by Pakistani and US-led forces to capture Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has been fruitless. The rival Sufi-influenced militants in Khyber have not been blamed for major attacks on Pakistani security forces or in Afghanistan, though security in the area appears to be deteriorating. In March, nearly 40 trucks carrying fuel to US-led forces in Afghanistan were destroyed and 100 people hurt in two bomb attacks at the Torkham border crossing. Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan disappeared in the region on Feb. 11. Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin was seen last month in a video aired on an Arab television channel saying he had been kidnapped by Taleban militants.
