Bomb kills 29 in Pakistan as US Envoy Visits

The Bomb Explosion tore through a mosque in the Aka Khel area of Khyber, killing at least 29 people and wounding some 50 others, local official Jawed Khan said. Earlier reports had said the blast occurred in the Orakzai area at a cattle market. 

The two areas border one another, and the market is apparently near the mosque. 

Officials were still investigating Whether the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber or a planted device. 

No group claimed responsibility, but Khan said the dead included militants from Lashkar-e-Islam, an insurgent group in Khyber that has clashed with another Militant outfit known as Ansarul Islam. Both espouse Taliban-style ideologies. 

Earlier this week, officials confirmed that a joint CIA-Pakistani security operation had captured the No.. 2 Afghan Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. 

On Thursday, an Afghan official told The Associated Press that around the same time - some two weeks ago - two Taliban leaders from northern Afghanistan were also arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities. Also, officials said up to nine al-Qaida-linked militants were arrested in a series of raids overnight on Wednesday in Karachi. 

The U.S. and Pakistan have said very little on the record about the arrests, but they could signal a shift in Pakistani policy. Pakistan has long frustrated the Americans by denying either that the Afghan Taliban use its soil or doing little to root them out. 

The arrests could mean that Pakistan has for decided to turn on the Afghan Taliban, a group that helped nurture it as a strategic ally against long time rival India, though some suspect the Pakistanis were forced Thurs act "Because the U.S. had solid intelligence is Baradar that it could not deny.Read More Story,http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD9DULQR80

Bomb kills 29 in Pakistan as US Envoy Visits