A Pakistani bomb disposal officer uses a metal detector in the Jamia Naeemia religious school [AFP]

One blast took place inside the offices of the Jamia Naeemia religious school and mosque in the eastern city of Lahore soon after Friday prayers, police said.

The second, a few minutes later, was a car bomb in the northwest of the country.

One of those killed in Lahore when a lone suicide bomber entered the school was a prominent religious leader known to oppose the Taliban, police said.

"Unfortunately, Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi has been martyred," Pervez Rathore, a Lahore police chief, told the Reuters news agency.

Another person was killed and at least six others hurt in the attack.

Nowshera blast

The second blast took place at a mosque in Nowshera, a city in North West Frontier Province, about 100km from the capital, Islamabad.

Thirty-two people were wounded in the car-bomb attack, Abdullah Khan, the local police chief, said.

Some of the victims may have died on the way to hospital, he added.

In recent weeks, Naeemi headed several meetings of religious leaders to denounce Taliban fighters for carrying out suicide blasts, and voiced support for the military operation taking place in Swat.

Naeemi recently passed a religious ruling (fatwa) saying suicide bombings were forbidden. He had been receiving death threats for some time.

Waqar Naeemi, his son, said he was critically wounded in the Lahore blast and later died in hospital.

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