Pope denounces suicide attack

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday denounced the Pakistan suicide attack, calling for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

"Once again, the Earth is stained by blood," he said of the Christmas Day suicide attack in which 45 people died.

Meanwhile, a bomb exploded during Christmas Day Mass at a chapel inside a police camp in the southern Philippines, wounding a priest and ten churchgoers. Also on Saturday, six people died in attacks by Muslim sect members on two churches in northern Nigeria.

The Pope appealed for people "to abandon ways of hatred to find peaceful solutions to conflicts and give security and serenity" to innocents.