QUETTA: At least 22 people were killed Friday in a suicide attack targeting a Shiite Muslim rally in Pakistan’s southwest city of Quetta, the latest in a string of sectarian attacks.
Police officials said unrest had broken out following the attack, with people setting fires as others fled or lay on the ground to avoid ongoing gunfire.
The bomb appeared to target a rally of 450 people being held for Al-Quds day, an international annual event held by the Shiite community opposing Israel’s control of Jerusalem and showing solidarity with Palestinian Muslims.
"At least 22 dead bodies have been moved to different hospitals. More than 40 people have been injured," said Akbar Magsi, a senior police office in Quetta.
Two intelligence officials in Quetta confirmed the death toll.
Local television channel AaJ reported that one of its drivers had been killed in the blast, while other stations reported that a reporter and three cameramen were wounded in the incident.
Volunteer worker Mujahid, at the scene, told ARY TV: "We have moved 17 injured people to hospital." Television channels showed patients being wheeled into a nearby hospital.
It was the latest in a string of attacks as Muslims marked the final days of the holy month of Ramadan.
Earlier, at least one man was killed and four wounded Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up 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 the guards outside and blew himself up," Mardan police chief Waqif Khan told AFP.
"A passerby was killed and four others were wounded in the firing and suicide attack," Khan said, adding that 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.
In the northwest city of Peshawar, which has often been targeted by militants, at least three policemen were injured 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.
On Wednesday three suicide bombers killed 31 people and wounded hundreds when they targeted a Shiite mourning procession made up of thousands of people, at the moment of the breaking of the fast in the holy month of Ramadan.
Religious violence in Pakistan, mostly between Sunni and Shiite groups, has killed more than 4,000 people in the past decade.
Sunni Muslims dominate Pakistan’s 160 million people, with Shiites accounting for around 20 percent of the population.
In May nearly 100 people were killed in the eastern city of 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 they were barred from calling themselves Muslims.
Many attribute the wave of Islamist militant attacks in Pakistan over the past three years to Islamabad’s alliance with Washington and the US-led war against a resurgent Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
They say the attacks are coordinated by Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants living in the remote mountainous areas bordering Afghanistan.
