Security tightened after five die in mosque blast

KARACHI, Tuesday (AFP) Pakistani security forces braced for revenge attacks Tuesday after a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Karachi left five people dead, the second violent sectarian attack in the space of five days.

Three suicide attackers with explosives strapped to their bodies stormed the minority Shiite Madinat-ul-Ilm mosque in the middle-class Gulshan neighbourhood during evening prayers late Monday.

A gunbattle broke out and a worshipper and a policeman died, while two of the attackers were shot dead and a third blew himself up inside the packed building, officials said. Two policemen and 21 civilians were injured.

The attack came just three days after 19 people, most of them Shiites, died in a suicide bomb blast at a Muslim shrine near the capital Islamabad, and triggered renewed fears of escalating tit-for-tat sectarian bloodshed.

Security was already tight across Pakistan - whose President Pervez Musharraf is both a major US ally and a target for disgruntled Islamic militants - after the Islamabad blast last Friday.

"We have issued instructions to all the four provinces to beef up security to be on full alert against any possible attacks," Interior Secretary Kamal Shah told AFP.

Thousands of Shiite and majority Sunni Muslims have been killed in religious unrest in Pakistan in recent years, with attacks including bomb blasts, suicide bombings and targeted killings. Last year 160 people died.

"It is a despicable act and we condemn it. We will launch full investigations into it," Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP after the Karachi attack.