Pakistan Attacks Spark Strife

Armed men opened fire on Shiite Muslim worshippers during a religious procession in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 29 people and wounding more than 150, authorities said. The city's mayor declared a curfew.

Officials reported an explosion and gunfire in a congested area of Quetta, the main city in southwest Baluchistan province, as a procession of hundreds of Shiite Muslims marking the Muharram holiday passed by.

Soon after, a Sunni Muslim mosque, a television network office and several shop were set afire as Shiites rioted in parts of the city, and an exchange of gunfire took place near the scene of the initial attack, police said.

Qamar Zaman, an assistant police inspector in Quetta, said 29 people were confirmed dead and more than 150 were injured. Two senior federal government officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the death toll.

Samim Durrani, medical superintendent at the central government hospital in Quetta, said it had received 10 dead and 33 injured, some in critical condition. Other hospitals in the city also received casualties.

Mayor Abdul Rahim Kakar told AP that he had imposed an immediate curfew in the city of 1.2 million to maintain law and order. He said troops and paramilitary forces had been deployed and were bringing the situation under control.

"I was present near the procession when we first heard an explosion and then some people fired shots," he said. "We still do not know what kind of explosion it was."

No arrests have been made.

The violence occurred hours after a series of coordinated blasts in Iraq struck major Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing scores of religious pilgrims.

Meanwhile, two people — one Shiite and one Sunni — were killed and 40 other people wounded in a clash between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Phalia, a town in Punjab province, about 100 miles east of Islamabad, said Nisar Ali Shah, a local police official.

The shootout happened during a Shiite procession, and people from the two sides then set several houses on fire, Shah said.

In Quetta, gunshots continued to ring out in the city nearly an hour after the killings, said Khyzar Hayyat, a local police official.

"The situation is very bad," he said. "I can hear gunshots."

Riaz Khan, Quetta's police chief, said that a Sunni mosque was set afire and was partially destroyed. Also, there was an exchange of fire between Shiite Muslims and unidentified rivals, he said.

Ijaz Khan, a reporter for the private GEO television network, said six unidentified people entered the GEO office there and set it afire. The office was empty and no one was injured. Last week, the network had run a talk show that allegedly aired offensive comments against Shiites.

Quetta was the site of one of the deadliest acts of sectarian violence in years in Pakistan. Attackers armed with machine-guns and grenades stormed a Shiite Muslim mosque in the city in July, killing 50 people praying inside.

Allama Hassan Turabi, a senior Pakistani Shiite leader, demanded that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf — who has repeatedly vowed to defeat extremism in the Islamic country — sack government officials including the interior minister for failing to prevent Tuesday's attack.

"This is not the first attack against us. Our people are not safe at homes. They are not safe in mosques," he told AP by telephone from Karachi.

Security had been stepped up nationwide in anticipation of Muharram, a month of mourning when Shiite Muslims recall the seventh-century death of Hussein, grandson of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

Shiites mark the occasion with religious processions, wearing black clothes as a sign of mourning and whipping themselves, in a sign of penitence over Hussein's death.

About 97 percent of Pakistan's population is Muslim, and Sunnis outnumber Shiites by a ratio of about 4-to-1.

Most of Pakistan's Sunni and Shiite Muslims live peacefully together, but small radical groups on both sides are responsible for frequent attacks.

The radical element has a high profile. U.S. and Pakistani troops are hunting Taliban — which Pakistani intelligence helped to found — and al Qaeda fighters in the country's lawless Northwestern province.

Musharraf, who himself seized power in a 1999 coup, has been the target of two assassination attempts in recent months.