Pakistan on alert after religious violence kills 31

PAKISTAN: Hundreds of Pakistani troops patrolled this simmering northwestern town Friday after at least 31 people died in a suspected suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim ceremony and in ensuing riots.

Security was high across Pakistan amid fears that Thursday's bloodshed in remote Hangu could stoke up tensions between the rest of the country's Sunnis and Shiites, who have a long history of sectarian clashes.

The attack targeted a procession celebrating the Ashura festival, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar, which marks the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson.

Officials said at least 24 people died in the bombing and a subsequent rampage by enraged Shiite mobs, while gunmen shot dead four bus passengers and four lorry drivers in related incidents just outside Hangu.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said in a statement that federal security services and the army took "immediate steps" to control the unrest and were continuing to help the provincial government in restore law and order.

Aziz appealed for calm, adding that "sectarian harmony, tolerance, brotherhood and unity is the need of the hour."

But police said late Thursday that they were only just bringing Hangu under control despite the deployment of army and paramilitary forces and added that the situation was still tense.

Sporadic gunfire rang out here on Thursday while fires from shops and cars torched by the Shiite mob cast a pall of smoke over the town, which is 175 kilometres (108 miles) west of Islamabad.

A leading Pakistani Shiite organisation pledged to hold protests after Muslim Friday prayers, a traditional flashpoint in Pakistan with hundreds of thousands of people pouring out of mosques at the same time.

In previous years, bombings like Thursday's have often spawned cycles of revenge, although Pakistani security forces have been on alert for the past week in preparation for Ashura.

HANGU, Friday AFP