Suicide Bombing at Pakistan Shi'ite Rally Kills 43

VOA News
03 September 2010

Pakistani officials say a suicide bombing killed at least 43 people Friday in the second attack on the country's Shi'ite minority this week.

The blast wounded more than 80 others in the southwestern city of Quetta. The suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a Shi'ite rally expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Officials say some angry about the attack fired shots into the air and set fire to nearby vehicles. Police were working to calm the unrest.

Two days earlier, a triple bombing at a Shi'ite religious procession in the eastern city of Lahore killed 35 people. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for Wednesday's blast.

Pakistani government officials have discouraged outdoor religious gatherings, and police in Quetta said they warned organizers of the Shi'ite rally about possible terrorist attacks.

In another incident Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself at a mosque of the Ahmadi sect in the northwestern city of Mardan. Security guards had barred entry to the man, so he detonated his explosives outside the mosque; one bystander was killed and several were wounded.

Pakistan declared Ahmadis a non-Muslim minority in the 1970s and later barred them from calling themselves Muslims. In May, militants stormed two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore and killed almost 100 people.

Shi'ite Muslims make up about 20 percent of the population in mostly-Sunni Muslim Pakistan.

Pakistani leaders condemned Friday's attack in Quetta.

In other violence Friday, a roadside bomb struck a Pakistani police patrol in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing a policeman and wounding three others.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.