PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec 10, (AFP): A suicide bomber blew up a trailer packed with explosives outside a Pakistani hospital on Friday, killing up to 11 people in an apparent attack on Shiite Muslims, police said.
It was the fourth bombing in Pakistan since Monday and struck the outskirts of the northwestern town of Hangu, a flashpoint for sectarian violence that traditionally flares during the current holy month of Muharram.
“Eleven people were killed and 17 injured,” Hangu police spokesman Fazal Naeem told AFP.
“It was a tractor with a trailer a carrying 250 kilograms of explosives hidden underneath materials for construction work at the hospital,” he said.

The bomber detonated the explosives at the gate of the hospital, punching a large crater in the ground, police said.
Local police chief Abdul Rashid earlier put the death toll at nine.
The hospital is run by a private Shiite Muslim trust, which also operated a nearby Shiite mosque and seminary, local officials said.
The blast partially damaged the mosque, vehicles and houses, Rashid said.
Two days ago a teenage suicide bomber killed 17 people at a busy market in the garrison town of Kohat, which neighbours Hangu.
Pakistan has stepped up security for Muharram, which began this week and sees tensions rise between Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslim and minority Shiite Muslim communities, and attacks on Shiite religious parades.

Around 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on networks linked to the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
The northwest has been particularly hard hit. Pakistan last year fought to wrest back control of the northwestern district of Swat from the Taleban and are fighting against homegrown insurgents along the Afghan border.
The leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan will meet in Turkey this month for talks aimed at bringing the troubled neighbours closer, Turkish officials said Friday.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul will host the meeting between his counterparts, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, scheduled for Dec 24 in Istanbul, foreign ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said.

It will be the fifth such meeting since 2007 when Turkey, Nato’s sole Muslim-majority member, launched the initiative to push Afghanistan and Pakistan to enhance cooperation against Islamist insurgents and improve ties poisoned by the insecurity plaguing their rugged border.
Military and intelligence officials from the two countries have also attended previous meetings.
The talks will follow a Dec 23 summit of the Economic Cooperation Organisation, a regional grouping aimed at boosting trade links, which includes the three countries as well as Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Unal said.
The list of participants has not been finalised yet, he said when asked whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would attend the gathering.