PAKISTAN: Security tight in Peshawar after a suspected suicide bomb kills at least 11, most of them Pakistani police

Pakistan increases security in Peshawar after a suspected suicide bomb attack near a mosque killed at least 11 people, most of them police officers. Security was tight in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Sunday (January 28) after a suspected suicide bomb attack killed at least 11 people, most of them police. Twenty more were wounded in the blast near the city's largest mosque and officials feared the death toll could rise. It was not clear who was behind the explosion, but Pakistan has been braced for a fresh outburst of sectarian violence during the Islamic month of Moharram, when the country's Shi'ite minority mourns the death of one of their sect's heroes. While the evening blast occurred just metres away from Qasim Ali Khan mosque, the largest Sunni mosque in the city, it was also close to a Shi'ite community centre, which had just been visited by the police caught in the explosion. "Our senior officials are killed like this. What will become of us? We have not slept the whole night," said Shahid Ali, a receptionist at a dental office in Peshawar. The Peshawar blast came a day after one in the capital Islamabad. A suicide bomber killed himself and a security guard when he was stopped at the side entrance of Islamabad's Marriott hotel, which is frequented by foreign diplomats and businessmen. While there are many motives for bombings in Pakistan, the timing raised the possibility the attack was sectarian. The climax of Moharram is the tenth day, known as Ashura, when worshippers beat themselves with sharpened chains during Shi'ite processions to mark the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet, during a battle in Kerbala, a city in modern-day Iraq, in 680 A.D. Depending on lunar sighting, Ashura is due to fall on Monday (January 29) or Tuesday (January 30) in Pakistan. During last year's Ashura, a suicide bomber killed at least 40 people, and wounded dozens in an attack on a Shi'ite procession in the town of Hangu in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and in 2003 during Ashura 57 Shi'ites were killed in Quetta. Peshawar is the main city in the volatile NWFP. Groups keen to destabilise President Pervez Musharraf's government were believed to have been behind a further spate of bomb attacks late last year. Pro-Taliban groups in the province are angry with the government's alliance with the United States. Sectarian violence, fuelled by Sunni and Shi'ite extremist groups has plagued Pakistan since the 1980s. Some Sunni groups latterly forged ties with al-Qaeda and helped carry out assassination attempts on Musharraf.

ITN Source | January 28, 2007

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