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PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sunday (AFP)

A wedding feast turned into carnage in Pakistan's lawless tribal zone when celebratory gun-firing by guests accidentally killed 22 people including the bridegroom, local officials said.

Tribal guests were "joyously" firing heavy weapons into the air in a traditional act of celebration when a mortar which had been loaded the wrong way back-fired, killing the man who fired it and guests around him, local administrator Fakhar-ud-Din told AFP.

The mortar had been loaded "upside-down", he said.

The dead included 14 children, women, and the 22-year-old bridegroom, hospital staff in the district of Kohat said.

More than 40 guests were also wounded in the accident in the village of Kraz in the North-West Frontier Province's Orak Zai tribal territory, some 130 kilometres (78 miles) south-west of the main western city of Peshawar.

The wounded were being treated at a government hospital in Kohat.

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