High alert in Pakistan as suicide bomb victims buried
PAKISTAN: Pakistani police were on high alert in Peshawar on
Sunday, as more than 2,OOO people gathered for the funerals of 15
victims of a suicide bomb attack, including the police chief of the
volatile northwestern city.
About 30 people were also wounded in the blast that went off shortly
before Shi'ite Muslims, observing their holiest month of Moharram, were
to begin a procession in the heart of North West Frontier Province's
capital.
It was unclear who was behind the explosion, but Pakistan has been
braced for a fresh outburst of sectarian violence during Moharram, when
the country's Shi'ite minority mourns the death of one of the heroes of
its sect.
"According to last information we received 15 people including the
suicide bomber have been killed and some 30 wounded, some of them
critically," Home Secretary Badshah Gul Wazir told Reuters on Sunday.
The city's police chief Malik Mohammad Saad was among the dead, along
with several fellow officers who had been assigned to guard the
procession.
The Peshawar blast came a day after another suicide bomber killed a
security guard and himself outside Marriott hotel in a high security
zone of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
A report in "The News" daily said intelligence agencies suspected
Friday's attack in Islamabad may have been carried out by Al-Furqan, a
splinter group of Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of the most feared militant
groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
Al Furqan is believed to have forged links with al Qaeda, and is more
anti-Western than Jaish.
But the motive for the blast at the Marriott remains unclear, as the
hotel, which is frequented by western diplomats and businessmen, was
also holding a reception later that day for the Indian High Commission
to celebrate Republic Day.
The explosion on Saturday night in Peshawar 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.
Police had found the remains of the suspected suicide bomber but had
not identified what group he might belong to.
The timing and location made it possible that the motive was
sectarian, but the slaying of the chief of police raised possibilities
that it was militant groups, possibly sympathetic with al Qaeda or the
Taliban, who want to destabilise President Pervez Musharraf's
government.
PESHAWAR, Sunday, Reuters |