The bomb exploded in a market controlled by Islamist militants in Khyber, which is part of a NATO supply route to troops in Afghanistan and has been branded an Al-Qaeda headquarters by Washington.

A militant commander and 15 others were killed in the explosion in the village of Dars in the Upper Tirah valley. The blast also damaged a mosque and some shops, leading security officials to suspect it might result from a feud between rival Islamist factions.

In total 16 people were killed and more than 20 injured, a local security official told AFP.

A witness who runs a private telephone exchange in the area told AFP: "It was a huge blast. I saw 16 dead bodies. I saw a lot of injured people lying on the ground."

Azam Khan, a deputy leader of the Lashkar-e-Islam militant group, was among the dead, local residents and an intelligence official told AFP.

Other details on whether it was a planted bomb or suicide attack could not immediately be confirmed.

One regional official said the bomb exploded as about 80 people gathered around the mosque, a cattle market and bazaar -- said by residents also to sell hashish -- and near a Lashkar-e-Islam base.

Lashkar-e-Islam (Army of Islam) is a militant group with ideological ties to the Taliban and the target of a Pakistani military operation to oust it from Khyber. Intelligence officials blamed warring extremist factions for the blast.

Islamist militants have orchestrated a deadly bombing campaign to avenge the Pakistani government's alliance with the United States in the "war on terror". Their attacks have killed more than 3,000 people since July 2007.

Elsewhere in the tribal belt, two US missiles destroyed a militant compound and vehicle in North Waziristan, which has become the arena for a covert US drone campaign against Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

An intelligence official in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, said four militants were killed by the missiles, including three Afghans attached to the Haqqani network.

The Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network is known for staging attacks on US and NATO troops in Afghanistan -- Washington has been pressing Islamabad to get tough on such groups that use Pakistani soil to launch strikes over the border.

About 15,000 Afghan, US and NATO troops are currently conducting Operation Mushtarak in southern Afghanistan against about 400 to 1,000 Taliban fighters.

It has been billed as the biggest assault since the 2001 US-led invasion and is targeting a major drug-producing area in Helmand province, which borders Pakistan's insurgency-rife Baluchistan province. Islamabad has raised concerns about Afghan refugees and fighters fleeing the offensive.

At a meeting with US envoy Richard Holbrooke, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed hope that "Pakistan's concerns on account of spillover of refugees and militants from Helmand... will be kept in view by the US and ISAF forces," the premier's office said.

But Pakistan's involvement in the arrest of the Afghan Taliban's number two, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been billed as a possible new era in US efforts to persuade Islamabad to move aggressively against Islamist networks.

"It's a tremendous event. It's a real achievement for Pakistani intelligence with American collaboration," Holbrooke told reporters.

"US-Pakistani relations are materially better than they were a year ago when this administration took office," Holbrooke said.

In Washington a US official told AFP two more senior Taliban leaders had been captured, in another apparent success for US cooperation in the region.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "shadow governors" Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammed had been arrested, but gave no details on the circumstances.

The governor of Afghanistan's Kunduz province, Mohammad Omar, said the pair were both captured in the Pakistani border town of Quetta.

The New York Times reported however that Salam was captured in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad and Mohammed in an undisclosed Pakistani city.

burs-njc/jj

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