Pakistan Bombing Kills At Least 41

A bomb blast killed at least 41 people and wounded dozens more in Pakistan's largest city on Tuesday during a park prayer service attended by thousands to mark the birth of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, officials said.

Angry mobs torched cars and a petrol station in the southern city of Karachi and hurled rocks at police, who fired warning shots into the air to try to break up the crowds in wild scenes following the attack, one of this South Asian country's deadliest ever.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the bombing, but similar attacks here in the past have been linked to simmering Shiite-Sunni Muslim tensions and most have been blamed on outlawed extremist groups.

The bomb exploded next to a stage erected in front of a crowd of at least 10,000 Sunni Muslim worshippers in downtown Karachi's Nishtar Park, where the service was arranged by the Sunni Tehrik (Urdu for Movement) religious group.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said authorities are investigating if a suicide bomber carried out the attack.

"It is a very unfortunate incident," Sherpao told The Associated Press. "I can confirm that 40 people have died in the bomb blast."

Officials at three Karachi hospitals said they received the bodies of 41 people slain in the attack, including 25 at state-run Jinnah Hospital, 10 at the Civil Hospital, and six at the Liaquat National Hospital.

Mayhem erupted in the park after the explosion as scores of men wearing long white, blood-splattered robes clambered onto the stage to assist victims, some apparently dead and others wounded and waving their arms for help.

A thick cloud of white smoke caused by the blast hung above the park, where the bodies of several slain worshippers laid on the dusty ground amid the wreckage the damaged stage.

Crowds of people ran frantically in different directions, many aiding and carrying wounded victims to dozens of ambulances that arrived at the scene. Some waved green flags bearing Quranic scripture. Others wept openly.

Police officers fired into the air to disperse crowds that massed at the scene.

"I saw body parts everywhere," said witness Mohammed Asif said. "I saw people collecting body parts and putting them into ambulances."

The bombing was Pakistan's deadliest since a March 19, 2005, bombing that killed 43 people at a Shiite shrine in the southwestern Baluchistan provincial town of Naseerabad.

President Pervez Musharraf condemned the attack and ordered increased security at religious events, adding that the culprits "will not go unpunished," according to a statement issued on Pakistan's state-run news agency.

Two prominent Sunni Muslim clerics were among Tuesday's dead. Akram Qadri, a senior leader of the Tehrik group that organized the service, died along with Karachi Sheik Hanif Billu, government and hospital officials said.

"Whoever did this was not a Muslim," said another Tehrik leader, Tanveer Shafi.

Soon after the bombing, violence erupted in nearby areas as groups of youths burned a gas station, buses, several cars and even a fire truck. Television footage showed a bus covered in yellow flames leaping into the air. Another mob pelted security forces with stones after the blast.

A young boy taken to a nearby hospital with burns to his face said he was praying in the park when a massive blast ripped through the crowd.

"I saw fire and smoke after the big explosion," the unidentified boy told privately owned Geo Television.

Television footage inside several Karachi hospitals showed scores of victims lying in crowded wards being treated as a screaming woman wailed over one of those killed in the blast, the body covered by a white sheet on a hospital bed.

Karachi has been the scene of several bombings and other attacks since Pakistan became a key ally of the United States in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America.

On March 2, a suicide bomber who was blocked from driving into the U.S. Consulate instead slammed into an American diplomat's car, killing the envoy and three others just days before U.S. President George W. Bush visited Pakistan.