Bomb Targets Shiite Muslims at Service in Pakistan
Reuters
A man was transported to a hospital after being injured in a bomb attack on a Shiite gathering on Sunday in Khanpur, Pakistan.
By DECLAN WALSH
Published: January 15, 2012
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An explosion ripped through a crowd of Shiite Muslims in central Pakistan on Sunday, killing at least 17 people in one of the largest such attacks of recent times in Pakistan’s most populous province.
Police said a bomb in Khanpur, a town in southern Punjab province, targeted Shiites as they streamed out of a mosque after a religious ceremony. The local police chief, Sohail Zaffar Chatta, said the device appeared to have been detonated by remote control.
By early evening 17 people had been confirmed killed and 25 injured, with the toll expected to rise. Television pictures from the scene showed black-clad women mourning over a corpse in the street while men angrily remonstrated before the cameras, beating their chests.
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The victims had been marking the chelum — a ceremony commemorating the 40th day after the death anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussain, a highly revered figure in Shiite Islam.
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Sunni extremist groups, who view Shiites as heretics, have been implicated in a rising number of a sectarian attacks, according to human rights monitors. “Ordinary Shias going about their daily lives are being increasingly targeted and killed,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director for Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York.
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While sectarian bloodshed occurs throughout Pakistan, it is concentrated in Baluchistan, a sprawling northwestern province where Taliban fighters and nationalist insurgents roam. Human Rights Watch reports that more than 300 Shiites have been killed in Baluchistan since 2008, many from the ethnic Hazara community.
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In one of the more striking atrocities, gunmen in September executed 26 Hazara pilgrims after pulling them off a bus headed for Iran. Three more pilgrims were killed later as the wounded were being taken to hospital in Quetta, the provincial capital.
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There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attack, but early suspicions focused on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group with deep roots in the area. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed several of the worst attacks in Baluchistan, and in December took responsibility for an attack in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that killed at least 63 Shiite worshipers.
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The group’s main recruiting ground, however, has been in southern Punjab, and its leader, Malik Ishaq, is from Khanpur. Mr. Ishaq was released from jail in July 2011 and spent several months under house arrest in the area, but is currently in a Lahore jail, Mr. Chatta, the police chief, said.
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The gruesome scenes in a quiet provincial town were a graphic reminder of the extremist violence that continues to plague Pakistan as the country’s military and political leaders engage in a bitter power struggle in the capital, Islamabad.
The army chief, Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and President Asif Ali Zardari are on opposites sides of two controversial court cases before the Supreme Court. The two men met face to face on Saturday for the first time since the crisis erupted in an apparent bid to show relations had not completely collapsed.
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Both sides said little about what happened, but the president’s spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, denied reports that General Kayani had demanded that the government retract its public criticism of the army leadership.
The judicial high drama is set to resume Monday when the Supreme Court again takes up the two cases troubling the civilian government, and which could potentially result in its ouster.
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The first hearing concerns the latest installment of a corruption-related investigation into President Zardari’s finances, which the court recently revived. The second focuses on accusations that civilian officials sought United States government help to stave off a possible coup by the humiliated Pakistani military after an American raid killed Osama bin Laden in May.
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Mansoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani origin who made the coup accusations has told reporters he will return to Pakistan to give testimony on Monday.
But Mr. Babar, the presidential spokesman, said Mr. Ijaz had not yet applied for a visa. “We have no idea about whether and when he will enter Pakistan,” he said.
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