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Pakistan school bombing kills eight
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan A bomb blast in Pakistan killed eight people on Wednesday, including four foreign aid workers and children at the opening of a school which been rebuilt after an Islamist attack.
Journalists were among up to 55 people wounded when the bomb exploded as Pakistani paramilitary forces escorted a group of foreign and local visitors to the inauguration ceremony for the newly built school in the volatile northwest.
"Eight people were killed in this blast -- four foreigners, one security guard and three schoolgirls," district police chief Mumtaz Zarin told AFP. "The school building was also badly damaged and three vehicles destroyed."
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the attack and ordered an investigation into the roadside bombing in Koto village, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Taimargara, the main town in Lower Dir district.
"The four foreigners were working for an NGO (non-governmental organisation). They are from the international community," said a spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps.
Chief doctor Mohammad Wakeel at the local Taimargara Hospital said four schoolgirls were killed and dozens wounded.
"We have four dead bodies. They are schoolgirls aged 10 to 15. We have received 65 injured, most of them are girls," he told AFP. Three journalists were also wounded, he added.
The nationalities of the dead foreigners were being investigated, police and foreign embassy officials said.
"We are checking on the whereabouts of all our people," US embassy spokesman Rick Snelsire told AFP.
The school was blown up in January 2009 and was rebuilt with the help of a foreign NGO, said local police official Yaqub Khan.
"Today there was a formal inauguration ceremony of the school. The bomb was buried on the roadside close to the school. There were nine rooms in the school, three rooms were completely destroyed," he told AFP.
Western groups have been working with the Pakistani government to promote girls' education in parts of the northwest, where Taliban-linked militants opposed to co-education have destroyed hundreds of schools.
Pakistan carried out a major offensive to crush a Taliban insurgency last year in Lower Dir and the neighbouring districts of Swat and Buner. Related article: US missile volley kills militants
Lower Dir borders Bajaur, a district in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt where a suicide bombing killed 17 people at a military checkpoint on Saturday and where Pakistan is waging a new air and ground assault on militants.
US officials call Pakistan's tribal belt the most dangerous place on Earth and, following the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the headquarters of Al-Qaeda, which has links to the Taliban and other extreme Islamist networks.
Late Tuesday, up to 10 unmanned US drone aircraft launched about 18 missiles on hideouts and training camps in five isolated settlements of the Dattakhel area in tribal North Waziristan, killing 31 people, mostly Islamist militants.
North Waziristan borders Afghanistan and is infested with Taliban insurgents, Al-Qaeda operatives and fighters with the Haqqani militant network.
"Thirty-one people, mostly militants, were killed," a senior security official told AFP.
"Eight to 10 US drones were involved... there were no such big strikes in the past, this was the heaviest," said another Pakistani security official.
He said the village of Daigan bore the brunt of the bombing raid, where militants had dug trenches and mounted anti-aircraft guns on vehicles to try to bring down the US drones which fly almost daily over the area.
"Some of the bodies are badly mutilated and beyond recognition," said resident Syed Mohammad.
Drone attacks have soared since US President Barack Obama put Pakistan at the heart of his administration's fight against Al-Qaeda, fanning anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.
US officials, however, say the drone programme has killed a number of high-value extremists and is a key weapon in the war on Al-Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban, across the border in Afghanistan.
Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud has been a target of the drone attacks. A number of reports say that he died of injuries sustained in a January strike on North Waziristan, but the Taliban deny that he is dead.
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