Suicide bombing kills 25 in Pakistan near Afghan border

~ Officials indicate the blast could be retaliation for the weekend killing of the Taliban's military chief.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A suicide bomber with a warning for American spies taped to his leg blew up a restaurant Tuesday, killing 25 people in the old quarter of this frontier city synonymous with violent Islamic radicalism and political intrigue.

Security officials indicate the blast could be retaliation for the weekend killing of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's military chief in nearby Afghanistan -- a further sign that the war between Islamic militants and NATO forces was spilling across the border.

The bomb went off in the four-story Marhaba Hotel in Peshawar, which served as the main staging point for mujahedeen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The lunchtime blast devastated the ground-floor restaurant, leaving corpses and body parts scattered among broken tables and shattered crockery.

Wrapped around the severed leg of the bomber was brown parcel tape bearing an ominous warning scrawled in the Pashto language: "Those who spy for America will face this same fate."

The tape also carried the Persian word "Khurasan" -- often used in militant videos to describe Afghanistan, said provincial police chief Sharif Virk.

Two security officials said a close relative of Dadullah was arrested in the restaurant a few days ago. The officials requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

They declined to identify the relative or say whether the arrest helped the U.S. military kill Dadullah in Afghanistan over the weekend. He was one of the most senior militant leaders to die since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001 for hosting al-Qaida.

Javed Iqbal Cheema, a top Pakistani counterterrorism official, told reporters he did not think Tuesday's bombing was linked to Dadullah, and denied that Pakistan had provided any intelligence that led to his killing.

"I would only say that Dadullah was killed in Afghanistan, and Pakistan did not provide any intelligence on Dadullah," he said in Islamabad.

Still, a senior investigator said police were examining whether the attack could be linked to events in Pakistan's volatile tribal regions or Afghanistan, including Dadullah's demise.

The bomb went off shortly after the restaurant's Afghan owner, Saddar Uddin, returned from a trip outside with some relatives, said waiter Hassan Khan. Uddin, his two sons, two other relatives and seven employees were among the dead, he added.

A local intelligence official said Uddin, an ethnic Uzbek, had links to the party of anti-Taliban warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, part of the Northern Alliance that helped the U.S. topple the old regime.

The hotel also was popular with Afghans and had been crowded with people eating lunch, according to the intelligence official. Both the official and the investigator asked that they not be identified for security reasons.

Cheema said 25 people were killed and 30 wounded in the bombing. Among the dead were two women and a 5-year-old boy, said police officer Saeed Khan.

The waiter, Hassan Khan, said he survived the blast because he was delivering food to guests in their rooms when the bomb went off in the restaurant below.

"I lost my senses, and when I came around and ran to see, there were dead bodies and body parts everywhere, even out in the street," said Khan, whose clothes were stained with blood and soot.

Television video showed the bloodied bodies of victims on stretchers being bundled into ambulances and carried through crowded hospital corridors.

The hotel's windows were shattered, as were those in nearby buildings.

Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier province, has an enduring reputation as a hub for armed militants and a spy-infested nest of political intrigue.

Drawn by the anti-Soviet jihad, Osama bin Laden was based here for several years when he helped recruit and finance a multinational force to fight inside Afghanistan; it would later spawn his al-Qaida network.

After the Taliban regime was ousted, its remnants fled into Pakistan. Leaders of the militia were widely suspected of hiding in cities including Peshawar, just an hour's drive through the Khyber Pass to the Afghan border.

The city is still home to hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, many sharing the Pashtun ethnicity of their Pakistani brethren.

Located close to militant strongholds in Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal areas and the scene also of sectarian tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the city has suffered regular bomb attacks.

In January, a suicide blast near a Shiite mosque killed 15 people and wounded more than 30, mostly police. On April 28, a suicide attack on Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao in the nearby town of Charsadda killed 28 people. Sherpao was slightly hurt.

The frontier region, viewed as a likely hiding place for bin Laden, has seen scores of targeted killings with a grisly link to Tuesday's attack -- notes attached to many of the victims, some of them beheaded, denouncing them as American spies.

Analysts say those killed -- including clerics and tribal elders -- reflect how militants deal with anyone too closely aligned with the United States or its Pakistani allies in the war on terrorism.

The Bush administration has backed President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as a bulwark against Islamic radicals and a guarantee that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal doesn't fall into extremists' hands.

However, the president is under increasing domestic pressure after weekend violence between his supporters and opponents killed 41 people in the southern city of Karachi and triggered a nationwide strike Monday. The unrest was linked to a political crisis stemming from Musharraf's suspension of Pakistan's top judge.

The government accuses the judge of malpractice, but opposition parties contend the president removed an independent-minded judge who might block his plans to seek another five-year term.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry on Tuesday challenged his ouster before the Supreme Court, which is dealing with 20 petitions alleging Musharraf's move against him was illegal. It's unclear when the court will reach a verdict.