By DPA
Islamabad : The chief minister of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province Thursday said the explosion in a border area with Afghanistan that killed 34 people was caused by a "foreign attack".
The Tuesday blast at a small compound south of Dattakhel town in the semi-autonomous North Waziristan tribal agency was initially described by Pakistan as "premature detonation" in a terrorist hideout.
"According to my information a foreign attack caused the deaths," Minister Akram Durrani told reporters in the provincial capital Peshawar.
However, he did not mention which foreign country might have carried out the attack.
Earlier, the legislative assembly in the province condemned the explosion, which they claimed was caused by a US missile attack from Afghanistan.
The opposition members – mainly from religious parties – of the national parliament accused the US of an alleged missile attack before staging a token walkout from the house.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan said Tuesday that they had no knowledge of the incident.
Meanwhile, local media reported Thursday that the target of the incident was not an Islamic seminary, as suggested earlier, but a cluster of open shelters in the mountains where locals retrieved 23 recognizable bodies and the burnt body parts of 11 more.
One person was injured while seven survived miraculously even though they were just a few yards from the target of the alleged attack, which has put the government's 2006 peace accords with local tribesmen in strain.
Under the agreement, the security forces ceased their operations in return for an end of local support to foreign militants, who have sought shelter in the area since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
US officials believe the peace deals have only turned the tribal areas into safe-havens for Islamic fighters who used these areas to launch attacks into Afghanistan.