Suicide bomber attacks mosque

A suicide bomber killed four people as he shot his way into a Shi'ite Muslim mosque and blew himself up in the Pakistani city of Lahore yesterday, emergency workers said.

The attack was the latest in a spate of sectarian attacks in Pakistan that has fuelled fears of a flare-up in violence between minority Shi'ite and majority Sunni Muslims.

Witnesses in the eastern city of Lahore said a man opened fire on a security guard who tried to stop him entering the mosque, then blew himself up inside.

At the entrance to the mosque was a large pool of blood and body parts, including the head of a child, were strewn around.

Women wailed and beat their chests and heads while male worshippers shouted angry slogans and attacked two policemen.

Khawaja Basharat, a Shi'ite community leader, said seven people, some children, had been killed, but an official from the private Edhi emergency service said five were killed - the attacker, two guards and two children - and seven wounded.

The bomber shot and killed two guards when they stopped him, Mr Basharat told Reuters.

"As soon as he entered, he blew himself up. The casualties could have been greater if the guards hadn't tried to stop him. He could not reach the prayer hall, the bravery of the guards saved many lives," he said.

Earlier yesterday, protesting Islamic students threw stones at police who replied with teargas in the southern city of Karachi ahead of the funeral of a leading pro-Taliban cleric and an associate assassinated by unknown gunmen on Saturday.

The killing of Mufti Jameel Ahmad Khan followed two deadly attacks on religious gatherings this month in which more than 70 people, both Sunnis and Shi'ites, were killed.

A car bomb attack on a crowd of radical Sunni Muslims in the city of Multan on Thursday killed at least 42 people and a suicide bombing at a crowded Shi'ite mosque killed 30 in the city of Sialkot on October 1.

Shi'ites make up about 15 per cent of Pakistan's 150 million people. Militants from the two communities have been waging a bloody campaign of attacks on each other for years, ostensively over dogmatic differences dating almost to the birth of Islam.

On Saturday, police said they had arrested more than 50 members of outlawed Islamic militant groups in central Pakistan as part of investigations into the Sialkot and Multan attacks.

After the Multan bombing, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said he would advise provincial governments to ban all religious gatherings and processions except in mosques.

But the warning was ignored the next day when thousands of Sunni radicals marched in Multan and vowed revenge on Shi'ites.

Analysts say President Pervez Musharraf's administration has itself to blame after failing to follow through on vows to crack down on militant groups, used by successive governments as policy tools against rival India and in Afghanistan.