Pakistan Mosque Blast Kills 22
A suicide attacker detonated a huge bomb inside a crowded Shiite Muslim mosque in an eastern Pakistani city during Friday prayers, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens, officials said.
Police said that hundreds of people were inside the Zainabia mosque in the city of Sialkot at the time of the blast, which severely damaged walls and left body parts scattered inside.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes less than a week after Pakistan killed a top al Qaeda suspect in a shootout in southern Pakistan — leading the government to claim it had broken the back of the terror network in the country.
Witnesses reported that a man with a briefcase entered the mosque shortly before the blast and the briefcase had exploded, Sialkot police chief Nisar Ahmed said.
"We are almost certain it was a suicide attack," he told The Associated Press. He said bomb disposal experts were examining remains of the briefcase, and their initial assessment was that it contained explosives.
He said that at least 16 people were killed. "Dozens of people have been taken to hospital in critical condition, and I think the casualties and death toll will rise," he said.
A security official in Islamabad, who requested anonymity, reported 19 deaths and nearly 50 injured.
Another official at the police control room in Sialkot, about 145 miles southeast of Islamabad, said the blast left a crater inside the mosque and had caused severe damage to the walls and shattered windows. Witnesses said many of the injured suffered burns.
Ahmed said a mob initially prevented police from entering inside. People had started pelting police with bricks and stones and wrecking property, torching at least one motorbike.
"I'm trying to handle the situation, I'm holding talks with their elders. I'm telling them we've come to help them," Ahmed said.
Murid Hussain, who lives near the mosque, said human remains were scattered inside the mosque and smoke everywhere. One of his relatives was injured in the blast and just remembered hearing a blast and then waking up in hospital.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed confirmed the blast but said he had no details on casualties. "This is the work of enemies of Pakistan and enemies of Islam, and we condemn it," he told AP in Islamabad.
Mosques of Pakistan's Shiite minority have often been targeted in sectarian violence with majority Sunni Muslims. Most of Pakistan's 150 million Muslims live in harmony, but there are radical elements on both sides of the sectarian divide.
Pakistan has been a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That support has triggered an angry backlash by Islamic militants who have launched repeated attacks across Pakistan.
The al Qaeda operative killed last weekend, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, was believed to be behind the kidnapping and beheading in 2002 of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and two failed assassination attempts on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that left 17 other people dead in December 2003.
Officials said Farooqi was a recruiter for al Qaeda in Pakistan and had masterminded previous bombings against Shiite Muslims. He was also member of the Sunni Muslim militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
A Shiite leader in the main southern city of Karachi claimed Friday's bombing was retaliation for the police shooting of Farooqi.
"Definitely, it was the work of the friends Farooqi," cleric Allama Hassan Turabi told AP, adding, "the people who planned this attack perhaps don't understand that we are not supporters of America. ... We are also against America."
Turabi demanded Musharraf, who returned Thursday from official visits to the United States and Europe, sack the interior minister and police chief for failing to protect the mosque.
The last major bombings against Shiite mosques were in Karachi in May, when two separate attacks three weeks apart, killed more than 40 people, and caused a wave of sectarian unrest in the volatile city. Authorities suspected Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group was responsible.