Mosque bomb: Death toll rising

2004-10-01 14:53

Islamabad - An explosion, apparently caused by a suicide bomber, ripped through a Shiite Muslim mosque in an eastern Pakistani city during Friday prayers, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens of others, officials said.

Police said that more than 100 people - and possibly as many as 500 - were inside the mosque in the centre of Sialkot city at the time of the blast, which triggered a riot by outraged worshippers.

Police in Sialkot said that at least 19 people were killed, although Pakistan's private Geo television network reported 25 dead.

A security official in Islamabad, who requested anonymity, said nearly 50 were injured.

Nisar Ahmed, police chief in Sialkot, said "Dozens of people have been taken to hospital in critical condition, and I think the casualties and death toll will rise," he said.

Suicide attack

Another official at the police control room in Sialkot said the blast left a crater inside the mosque and had caused severe damage to the walls and shattered windows.

Ahmed said body parts were scattered inside the mosque, and a mob was preventing police from entering inside. People had started pelting police with bricks and stones and wrecking property, torching at least one motorbike.

"I'm trying to handle the situation, I'm holding talks with their elders. I'm telling them we've come to help them," Ahmed said.

He said that according to witnesses, a man with a briefcase entered the mosque shortly before the blast and the briefcase had exploded. "Based on this account, I think it's a suicide attack," the police chief said.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed confirmed the blast but said he had no details on casualties. "This is the work of enemies of Pakistan and enemies of Islam, and we condemn it," he told AP in Islamabad.

Mosques of Pakistan's Shiite minority have often been targeted in sectarian violence with majority Sunni Muslims. Most of Pakistan's 150 million Muslims live in harmony, but there are radical elements on both sides of the sectarian divide.

The attack comes less than a week after Pakistan arrested a top al-Qaeda suspect, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, believed to be behind the kidnapping and beheading in 2002 of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and two failed assassination attempts on President General Pervez Musharraf that left 17 other people dead in December 2003.

- AP