Agence France-Presse,
Pakistan beefed up security amid fears of further suicide attacks Wednesday after a bomber with a bag of explosives on his head and chilling notes taped to his legs killed 25 people.
Tuesday's blast targeting a hotel run by Afghan refugees in Peshawar, near the Taliban-infested northwestern border with Afghanistan, has intensified the internal strife facing military ruler President Pervez Musharraf.
“Security has been further tightened across the country,” interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP.
Provincial law minister Malik Zafar Azam said investigators were “examining the possibility that the hotel was used as a place to spy on Taliban activities and gather information about them.”
A message taped to the attacker's severed leg that warned so-called spies for US forces in Afghanistan would suffer a similar fate “points to that,” the minister said.
The shabbily-dressed bomber “entered the hotel carrying a sack of explosives on his head” before walking towards the restaurant outside where he blew himself up, Azam said.
A second message was taped to the man's other leg saying: “Those who kill pure and praying people meet the same fate,” Peshawar police chief Abdul Majid Khan Marwat said.
The message was signed the “Beast of Khurasan,” he told reporters. Khurasan is an ancient name for Afghanistan.
Both messages were in Pashto, the language spoken by ethnic Pashtuns who inhabit the Pakistan-Afghan border area and also by Taliban militants fighting a bloody insurgency in Afghanistan.
The police chief denied reports that the son of top Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah had been arrested from the hotel earlier. Dadullah was killed in southern Afghanistan on Friday.
Officials said hotel owner Sadruddin, who died in the blast with his three sons, was a member of the party of ethnic Uzbek Afghan warlord Abdur Rashid Dostam, who fought with the Northern Alliance that ousted the Taliban in 2001.
His son had fought a previous election on Dostam's ticket but lost. Dostam's political party operated an office from the basement of the hotel, officials said.
“The investigations are probing the background of the hotel owner and his family and whether the suicide attack was meant to target them,” minister Azam said.
Peshawar, which is home to thousands of Afghan refugees, has long suffered from the spillover of the Taliban insurgency into Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Five people were killed on Wednesday when a rocket hit a bus stand amid clashes between Islamic militants and security forces in the northwestern town of Tank, which also adjoins the tribal belt.
The attacks came with Pakistani security forces already on high alert after political violence over the suspension of the country's top judge left 40 people dead in the southern city of Karachi at the weekend.
There was no suggestion the Peshawar blast was linked to the Karachi clashes.
Musharraf, a key US ally, removed Chief Justice Ifktikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on March 9, sparking a wave of protests that analysts say are the biggest threat to his eight-year rule.
