Riots continue after suicide attack on Pakistan mosque
Thousands of minority Shiite Muslims rampaged through an eastern Pakistan city for a second day today, setting fire to a police station and the mayor’s office, after a mass funeral for victims of a suicide bombing at a mosque that killed 31 people.
Rioters also burned a record room of a court in Sialkot and torched several motorcycles parked at the police station, until hundreds of army troops and police commandos managed to restore order. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
The violence broke out after about 15,000 mourners, beating their chests and wailing, gathered for a funeral of victims of Friday’s bomb attack at the Zainabia mosque, which also wounded more than 50 people.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said the attack could have been a reaction to the death of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a top Pakistani al-Qaida operative and radical Sunni Muslim militant group leader who was killed by Pakistani security forces in a gun battle a week ago.
The government on Saturday offered a reward of 10 million rupees (€145,000) for information leading to the identity of the suicide bomber, as police investigators searched for clues at the mosque and questioned witnesses. No one claimed responsibility and officials declined to speculate on who was responsible.
“Police and other security agencies are still investigating, and at this stage I cannot say whether al-Qaida was involved in this act of terrorism,” said provincial Minister Raja Basharat Elahi.
Police quoted witnesses as saying the attacker strode into the mosque carrying the bomb in a briefcase and the moment he opened it, a blast ripped through the mosque, killing 16 people on the spot. Fifteen others died later.
“I confirm that the suicide attack on a mosque in Sialkot killed 31 people,” Elahi said. He said 29 bodies have been identified, and efforts were underway to identify the remaining two.
“Maybe, one of them or both were the suicide bombers,” he said.
After the blast, experts defused a second briefcase bomb outside the mosque - likely saving many lives as hundreds of Shiites had gathered there to protest the attack. Rioting on Friday prompted an army deployment amid fears of sectarian unrest despite appeals by Shiite clerics for calm.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in fighting al Qaida, condemned the blast, which he said showed “terrorists have no religion and are enemies of mankind.” He renewed his government’s commitment to root them out.
In the three years since Musharraf threw Pakistan’s support behind the US-led war on terror, Islamic militants, often linked to al Qaida, have launched repeated attacks against the government and Western targets.
Violence has also been directed at Shiites, who make up about 20% of Pakistan’s 150 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.
Although the vast majority live together peacefully, there are extremist elements in both sects who launch attacks.
Farooqi, who was killed last Sunday in a shootout with paramilitary police in a southern town, was a member of the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi - blamed for two bombings of Shiite mosques in Karachi in May that killed more than 40 people.
Officials say Farooqi was a recruiter for al Qaida, and he was accused in a string of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the kidnapping and beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, and two assassination attempts against Musharraf in December 2003 that killed 17 other people.
Friday’s blast in Sialkot, 145 miles south-east of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, caused mayhem in the industrial city, where Shiites and Sunnis generally live in harmony.
“I was praying when I first saw a bright light and then something exploded with a big bang, and I fell down,” said Sajjad Anwar, 36, who was being treated at a hospital.
“I saw human body pieces hitting the walls and ceiling of the mosque,” he said.
Another injured man, Mumtaz Ali Shah, 43, said: “My mind stopped working for a while after the blast, but when I opened my eyes, I was lying among dead bodies.”
