Pakistan mourns Shiite procession deaths

Angry mourners on rampage :

PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi shut down Tuesday to mourn at least 33 people killed in a suicide bombing at a procession of Shiite Muslims on their holiest day.

Monday’s blast sparked riots in Pakistan’s largest city where angry mourners went on the rampage, throwing stones at ambulances, torching cars and shops and firing bullets into the air, sparking appeals for calm.

“The death toll has risen to 33 and there are more than 60 people who were wounded,” said Saghir Ahmed, health minister of the southern Sindh province of which Karachi is capital.

Investigators said the upper part of the bomber had been retrieved from the blast site, the busy Mohammad Ali Jinnah road where several wholesale markets of plastic goods and other merchandise are situated.

“The explosion ripped his legs off but the upper part of his body remained intact with his head.

The bomber used 16 kilograms (35 pounds) of highly explosive material in his attack,” said bomb disposal official Munir Shaikh.

Firefighters struggled throughout the night to extinguish a fire at the nearby markets that was set ablaze by angry mourners, as stunned vendors waited helplessly for an opportunity to salvage anything left.

An AFP reporter said the area was littered with abandoned sandals, water bottles, lunch boxes and charred wreckage of cars and buses. Traffic was thin because the government announced a day of mourning.

The bomber blew himself up alongside Pakistan’s main parade for Ashura when Shiite faithful mourn the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.

Mohammad Hanif, a plastic toys vendor, told AFP outside his ruined shop that the bombing had robbed him of his livelihood.

“Terrorists have not only killed people attending the procession, but they killed us and our families who depended on this shop,” Hanif said, tears in his eyes. Karachi, Tuesday, AFP