A bomb blast killed around 40 worshippers attending Friday prayers at a mosque in a restive area of northwest Pakistan. “The death toll is 40. We have no idea as yet how many have been wounded,” said Atif-ur-Rehman, the senior-most government administrator in the Upper Dir district, close to Swat Valley, where the army has been conducting a major offensive against the Taleban. “A large number of body parts are scattered in the mosque. We don't know whether these are parts of the dead who have been identified or of others.” Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said such incidents would not “deter the government from its resolve to eliminate this scourge (of terrorism) from the country.” Earlier on Friday, police arrested suicide bombers in Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi, Pakistan's interior minister said. US special envoy Richard Holbrooke consulted the country's leaders on what needs to be done once the army eliminates the Taleban in Swat Valley. Gilani urged the United States to write off Pakistan's debt, which at end-March stood at $1.55 billion, and told Holbrooke America should expedite the supply of military hardware. Interior Minister Rehman Malik told journalists the suspected bombers caught in Islamabad and Rawalpindi had suicide jackets, but did not say how many. The News daily reported four men were being held. Roadblocks have multiplied in recent days in both the capital and Rawalpindi, where the army is headquartered, over fears of attacks in retaliation against the Swat offensive. “The people of Swat have realized that the entire misery which we are facing today, it is because of the Taleban, because of the terrorists, who are not only enemies of the country but enemies of Islam,” Malik said. On Thursday, hours after Holbrooke visited Mardan district to see camps set up for some of the 2.5 million people who have fled Swat, militants shot dead five policemen and a soldier after first targetting a convoy with a roadside bomb. Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani said his forces had snuffed out “organized resistance in Swat.
