A northwest Pakistan mosque was struck by a suicide bombing, resulting in at least 38 people killed on Friday, Reuters reports.

Pakistan officials said that as many as 50 people are likely to have died in the blast, but the reports were not yet confirmed. Another 40 people were also wounded.

Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, an interior minister in President Pervez Musharraf’s recently dissolved government and who is currently running in January 8 parliamentary elections, was the possible target of the attack at the mosque in his home village, according to the government.

"At the moment we have 38 confirmed dead and 40 wounded. We feel that Sherpao was the target. There are so many mosques in that area. Why did the bomber select that mosque for the attack?" Federal Secretary of Interior Syed Kamal Shah told Reuters.

Sherpao was offering Muslim Eid festival prayers with worshippers, officials said. The bomb exploded as people ended their prayers and gathered around Sherpao to greet him, a police officials who asked his identity not to be revealved said. Over 1,000 people were present at the time of blast in the mosque, some 25 km from Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province.

Sherpao was not hurt but he said his son had been. In April, a suicide bomber attacked a rally for Sherpao’s political party in the nearby town Charsadda, resulting in at least 28 people killed.

The injured and dead bodies were immediately taken to the nearby hospitals, while police is investigating the attack.

According to Pakistan’s army, at least 600 people have been killed in militant bomb attacks since July.