15 die in mosque attack

2003-07-04 15:21

Quetta - At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured in a suspected suicide attack at a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta Friday, sparking riots that forced the government to impose an indefinite curfew, officials said.

Armed policemen and paramilitary troops spread out in the city, as local administration declared the curfew asking people to remain indoors, officials and witnesses said.

"Curfew has been clamped down in Quetta and paramilitary and police have been deployed to control the rioting," Brigadier Javed Cheema, head of the interior ministry's National Crises Management Cell, said.

Asked if the security forces had been given orders to shoot rioters on sight, Cheema said it was "normal procedure in a curfew situation".

The attackers hurled grenades and fired at the Friday congregation at the main Shiite mosque in Quetta, capital of southwestern Baluchistan province.

Police said the exact number of assailants was still unclear, adding that one of them was blown up inside the mosque by a grenade and another was killed at the main entrance by mosque guards.

A third suspected attacker wounded in firing died later in hospital, a police officer said.

The suspected sectarian attack came as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was briefing newsmen in Paris at the end of his four-nation tour aimed at wooing foreign investors.

Musharraf said there were "some elements in Pakistan that undermine whatever the vast majority stands for".

"We have to act very strongly against them," he said, noting that the government was aware of what he described as "vested interests" working against the authorities in Islamabad.

"There will be no dearth of strength and resolve in acting against them," Musharraf said.

The attack was the second in less than a month against the Shiite ethnic Hazara community in Quetta. On June 8, 12 police trainees from the Hazara community were shot dead and another eight injured in Quetta.

"Angry people are on the streets, they are firing into the air and damaging property," an AFP photographer at the scene said, before the announcement of the curfew.

An emergency was declared at Quetta's main Civil Hospital where the dead and injured were brought in by ambulances.

Shi'ites form about 20% of Pakistan's Sunni-dominated 145 million population.

Thousands of people have been killed in violence blamed on militants from the Sunni and Shiite communities since the late 1980s.

- AFX