4:18pm Friday 3rd September 2010
More than 40 people were killed in suicide bombings targeting religious minorities in Pakistan today.
A blast killed at least 43 people in the south-western city of Quetta at a Shiite procession calling for solidarity with Palestinians. Police said 78 people were wounded and several were in critical condition.
Protesters dragged wounded people into private cars as burning motorcycles sent clouds of black smoke billowing through the streets. The bodies of the dead and wounded lay strewn across the road.
Some Shiite youths fired in the air after the blast as officers tried to control the situation.
Shiite leader Allama Abbas Kumaili appealed to participants to remain peaceful.
”We understand these are attempts to set Sunni and Shiite sects against each other,” he said.
Earlier a suicide attack on a mosque belonging to the minority Ahmadi sect killed at least one person and wounded several others in the north-west Pakistani town of Mardan.
The attack in Quetta was the second this week on Pakistani Shiites, who by some estimates make up about 20% of the population in the mostly Sunni Muslim country.
A triple suicide attack on Wednesday night killed 35 people at a Shiite ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.
The attacks came with the country still reeling from devastating floods that have left millions homeless and more than one thousand dead.
Kumaili said the attacks against minority sects were a result of government failure.
”Our government concentrates all its efforts to secure VIPs. Common men are not their priority,” he said.
Government officials have said they cannot protect outdoor gatherings from attacks, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik called for Shiites to hold religious ceremonies indoors.
Baluchistan provincial Police Chief Malik Iqbal said officials had warned organisers of the Quetta ceremony to stick inside a security cordon after intelligence agents received reports about a possible terror attack.
”They violated the route,” Iqbal said. “We had warned them not to extend their rally out of the cordon.”
Wednesday’s attack in Lahore, and a host of other assaults on religious minorities, was claimed by the hardline Sunni Pakistani Taliban, which is seeking to overthrow a Western-backed government shaken most recently by flooding that has caused massive displacement, suffering and economic damage.
Military and law-enforcement officials have also been targeted by militant violence, particularly along the border with Afghanistan. Officials said a roadside bomb attack in the capital of the north-west’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province today killed one police officer and wounded three others.
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