At least 16 people have been killed in a blast at a mosque inside a religious school in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region.
Intelligence officials said a prominent religious leader appeared to have been the target of the explosion in the town of Wana, near the Afghan border, on Monday.
"Apparently it was a suicide attack and Maulana Noor Mohammad was the target," the Reuters news agency cited an intelligence official in Wana as saying.
Noor Mohammad, a former parliamentarian who was running the school, was greeting worshippers after prayers at the mosque when the bomber struck.
The mosque was badly damaged in the blast, and local residents were busy trying to recover people from the rubble amid fears that the death toll could rise further.
Many wounded
A health official in a paramilitary hospital in Wana said several people had been critically wounded.
"We have received 14 injured but their condition was very critical," the official told the news agency AFP.
Locals described the cleric as an influential figure who had several times acted as a negotiator between the Taliban and the Pakistani government.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said the Taliban could be behind the blast.
"They have of course carried out similar attacks in the past," he said.
"But as we know in the past several weeks as Pakistan has come to terms with terrible and devastating floods we haven't heard or seen a lot of these attacks, so this news is certainly very worrying."
Elsewhere in Pakistan's tribal belt, a landmine blast killed seven people as tribal elders met in the Khumas village of Kurram district on Monday.
It was not immediately clear whether the blast was an intended attack or whether the ordinance had exploded accidentally.
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