Hundreds of mourners wept today as villagers buried victims of a horrific suicide bombing at a Pakistan election rally, an attack that killed 27 people and stoked fears about security ahead of next week’s crucial parliamentary election.

A suicide bomber struck today at an election rally in north-western Pakistan, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 20, officials said.

Pakistani authorities were today continuing to question a 15-year-old boy who has confessed to be being part of the team that killed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, marking what could be the first major breakthrough in the investigation.

Rescuers in Pakistan searched for survivors today after landslides and lightning killed more than 70 people and destroyed homes in two remote villages, officials said.

Gunmen opened fire on Shiite Muslims in a remote town of north-western Pakistan, sparking gun battles between majority Sunni and Shiites that left 10 people dead and 83 wounded, an official said today.

A car bomb exploded near the entrance of the airport in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar today, killing one man and wounding two others, police said.

About 5,000 people gathered today for Pakistan’s biggest protest yet against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in European newspapers.

Pakistan deported a British citizen who was arrested last year for alleged links with terrorists, a lawyer said today.

An "important" suspect in the London attacks is under arrest, a Pakistani official said today, as investigators used telephone numbers provided by Britain to determine who may have had contact with the suicide bombers.

MORE than 7,200 villages have been inundated and some 176,000 people left homeless by monsoon floods in India’s western Gujarat state, where a dead lion washed up with dozens of other casualties, officials and news reports said yesterday.

At least 129 people have died in recent sweltering temperatures in Pakistan, many of them in eastern Punjab province, the health ministry said today.

Pakistani and US forces have intensified the search for Osama bin Laden along a south-western stretch of the border with Afghanistan following information from a newly captured al-Qaida deputy, Pakistani intelligence and military officials say.

Osama bin Laden is believed to be with "friends" of a Pakistani religious party leader, says an official in Afghanistan's interim government.

The Pakistani dictatorship has revealed plans to crack down on the country’s Islamic schools, state-funded institutions that sent hundreds of young students to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In buses and trucks, pickups and vans, more than 5,000 people rolled out of a northeastern Pakistan village this morning, bound for the Afghan frontier and vowing to fight a holy war against the United States.