At least 53 killed, 197 injured in Pakistan suicide bombing

At least 53 people were killed and 197 wounded yesterday in a suicide bombing targeting a Shiite Muslim rally in the southwestern city of Quetta, police said.

The bomber was among the 450-strong crowd and detonated on reaching the main square in the city, according to police.

The explosion triggered chaotic scenes, with an angry mob starting fires and shooting into the air while others fled or lay on the ground to avoid the gunfire, they added.

“According to the reports collected from hospitals, 53 people have been killed and 197 have been injured,” Sardar Khan, chief of Quetta’s police control room, said.

It was the latest in a string of apparent sectarian attacks, after three suicide bombers killed 31 people and wounded hundreds more on Wednesday at a Shiite mourning procession in the eastern city of Lahore.

Yesterday’s rally was held to mark Al-Quds day, an international event staged each year by the Shiite community to oppose Israel’s control of Jerusalem and show solidarity with Palestinian Muslims.

Shiite Muslims are a minority in Pakistan, accounting for around a fifth of the country’s 160 million population, which is dominated by Sunnis.

Malik Iqbal, police chief for Baluchistan province, said that rally organisers had been warned to use a different route in case of terror attacks.

Police were forced to quell unrest after the bombing, Mr Khan said.

“An angry mob tried to set on fire a private building and vehicles. Some of the participants were armed and they were firing in the air. They also set on fire some bicycles and motorcycles,” said Mr Khan.

Mr Khan said that 40 dead bodies and 159 injured people were brought to Quetta’s combined military hospital after the blast, while another nine bodies and 36 injured were taken to the main Quetta civil hospital.

Four more dead bodies and two injured were taken to the Bolan medical complex, he said.

Local TV channel AaJ said one of its drivers had been killed in the blast, while there were reports of several other journalists injured in the incident.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani strongly condemned the bomb blast and called for an immediate inquiry into the incident. The US embassy also condemned the bombing.

Militants have launched a series of attacks in Pakistan as Muslims marked the final days of the holy month of Ramadan.

Earlier, at least one man was killed and four wounded yesterday when a suicide bomber blew himself up after being apprehended by police outside a mosque of the Ahmadi sect in the city of Mardan in northwest Pakistan, police said.

“A suicide bomber was trying to enter the Ahmadis’ worship place, but he was intercepted by police,” Mardan police chief Waqif Khan said, adding that the bomber had been shot before blowing himself up on the ground.

“A passerby was killed and four others were wounded in the firing and suicide attack,” Mr Khan said. He said it was unclear whether the man was killed by the bomb or by gunshots fired by the guards.

Police have handed over the bomber’s body parts to a forensic team, he said.

The attacks came as two separate US drone strikes killed at least ten militants yesterday in the tribal belt close to the Afghan border, according to Pakistani officials.

Later yesterday the Pakistani Taliban vowed to attack the United States and Europe, days after the US State Department added the group to a blacklist of foreign terrorist organisations.

“Soon we will target America and Europe, we will take revenge for the drone strikes,” Qari Hussain, a militant commander for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan faction, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“(President Barack) Obama and his allies are our enemies – they are afraid of us. We do not care if they have declared us a terrorist group,” he said.

“We will carry out more attacks, inside Pakistan and Afghanistan. We will target Americans and their allies wherever they are,” he said.

Mr Hussain is also known as “Ustad-e-Fidaeen”, or teacher of suicide bombers.

“Obama and his friends are the real terrorists, Pakistan is also an ally of America and we will attack all Pakistani government officials,” he said.

Mr Hussain said the group also took responsibility for the triple suicide bombing in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore which killed 31 people when it targeted a Shiite mourning procession on Wednesday.

More than 3,660 people have been killed in a series of suicide attacks and bomb explosions, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists, in Pakistan during the last three years. In the northwest city of Peshawar, which has often been targeted by militants, at least three policemen were injured yesterday when a bomb exploded near their patrol vehicle, police said.

The officers were checking vehicles on the city’s ring road and senior police official Mohammad Karim Khan said the bomb was detonated by remote control.

In May nearly 100 people were killed in Lahore after militants stormed two Ahmadi prayer halls, launching gun and grenade attacks. Gunmen later raided the hospital where victims were being treated, killing four people in a shootout.

Founded by Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1838, the Ahmadi sect believes that Ahmad himself was a prophet and that Jesus died aged 120 in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir.

Pakistan declared them non-Muslims in 1974 and 10 years later barred them from calling themselves Muslims.