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PESHAWAR - A blast near the largest mosque in the Pakistani city of Peshawar killed up to 10 people, most of them police officers.
It was unknown who was behind the explosion, but Pakistan has been braced for a fresh outburst of sectarian violence during the Islamic month of Moharram, when the country's Shiite minority mourns the death of one their sect's heroes.
While the blast was just metres away from Qasim Ali Khan mosque, the largest Sunni mosque in the city, it was also close to a Shiite community centre, which had just been visited by the police caught in the explosion.
"When they went out there was an explosion. It terrified us, the noise was deafening," Sayed Qainul Hassan, the man in charge of the community centre, said.
Police officer Chaudhry Ashraf said most of the dead were policemen.
A journalist saw the corpses of three civilians being carried through a hospital by men chanting anti-government slogans.
- REUTERS
