Thirty two suspected Al Qaeda [Images] terrorists were killed in an explosion in a madrassa in North Waziristan near the Pak-Afghan border.

While locals claimed that the blast, which took place on Tuesday night in the Dattakhel area of north Waziristan, was caused by a missile attack from across the border, Pakistan defence officials asserted that the explosion took place when bombs being made by the terrorists in the seminary accidentally went off.

Another madrassa and two adjacent houses in Dattakhel area were also destroyed in the explosion.

Pakistan's Defence spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said that several casualties occurred when bombs being made by terrorists accidentally exploded.

He said the place where the explosions took place was a training facility.

Tribesmen from Dattakhel who reached Miranshah, headquarters of North Waziristan where Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists were holed up, brought 24 wooden coffins from the market and ordered another 24.

Around 50 students and their teachers were present in the Binori madrassa when it was hit and all of them were killed or injured, The News reported on Wednesday.

Casualties were also feared in adjoining two houses.

Villagers reported seeing a drone that had flown from Afghanistan in the morning firing two missiles at the seminary and flattening its structure, it said.

Hundreds of foreign Al Qaeda terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden fled into Pakistan's tribal belt after US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime from Afghanistan.

Last year Pakistan acknowledged that it carried out a missile attack on a madrassa in the tribal belt in which 80 people who were described as militants under training were killed.

In the past also, the military authorities have explained similar occurrences as a consequence of explosions accidentally caused by bomb-makers.

The remoteness of the Mami Noma Manzarkhel village made it difficult to get details of the attack.

The few telephones in the area, located around 75 kilometres west of Miranshah, were not working.

The targetted village, sited 16 km from Dattakhel town in the Sher Ali Ghundai area, is close to the border with Afghanistan.

The mud-built Binori Madrassa was located at some distance from the village.

'It was intriguing to note that US helicopters had reportedly dropped leaflets in the border areas of both North Waziristan and South Waziristan last Saturday warning the tribes living there not to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

'The leaflets in Pashto language threatened them with attacks involving chemical weapons if attacks across the Pak-Afghan border were not stopped and military training camps in Waziristan were not closed', the newspaper said.