A suicide bomber killed at least 38 people in a mosque in northwest Pakistan today where a former interior minister was offering Muslim Eid festival prayers with worshippers, officials said.
Intelligence officials said as many as 50 people may have died when the attacker detonated explosives inside the mosque but the number could not be immediately confirmed by police.
Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, who was interior minister in President Pervez Musharraf’s recently dissolved government and who is now running in the 8 January parliamentary elections, was the likely target of the attack at the mosque in his home village, the government said.
– The Independent
Two Pakistani police officers were charged with criminal conspiracy after a high-powered committee found they had helped Rashid Rauf, a key suspect in the Heathrow bomb plot, to escape. Mr Rauf, a British national of Pakistani origin, fled custody as he was being transported from an Islamabad court to the high-security Adiala jail in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.
– The Times
A gang of arts thieves yesterday launched a dawn raid on one of South America’s most famous art galleries, making off with two paintings together worth over GB pound 50m.
The paintings, by Picasso and the Brazilian painter Candido Portinari, were the centre-pieces of the art collection at Sao Paulo’s Art Museum, or Masp as it is better known.
The museum’s collection is made up of over 7,500 works of art, including paintings by Rubens and Dali, the museum’s collection is valued at around GB pound 600m.
– The Guardian