Injured suicide blast victims lie on hospital tables after a suicide blast targeting a Shiites procession in the southern Pakistani city of Jacobabad on October 23, 2015. At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured in a suspected suicide blast targeting Shiites in the southern Pakistani city of Jacobabad Friday, police and hospital officials said. AFP
At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured in a suspected suicide blast targeting Shiites in the southern Pakistani city of Jacobabad Friday, the top local official said.
The attack came with Pakistan on high alert for the mourning days of Ashura, during the holy month of Moharram, a flashpoint for sectarian violence in previous years.
“Many injured and bodies were brought to the Civil Hospital,” senior police officer Zafar Iqbal told AFP, initially describing the blast as a suicide attack but later saying authorities were still investigating.
Shah Zaman Khoro, the top administrative officer in the district, said 16 people had been killed and at least 28 had rushed to hospital.
Regional police chief Sain Rakhio Mirani told AFP that “initial evidence” suggested a suicide bomber was responsible for the blast, adding that a counter terrorism team had been dispatched from Karachi to investigate further.
The police chief also confirmed that at least six of the victims were children.
Civil Hospital chief Dr Altaf Wagan said at least 15 bodies and dozens more injured people had been brought in, and said that more wounded had been shifted to two other hospitals nearby.
The attack came outside the residence of a local Shiite leader as devotees were setting off towards a main procession in the city, some 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Karachi, Iqbal said.
Witnesses described the wounded being rushed to hospital by ambulance and auto-rickshaw, and said there were children among the dead and injured.
“We were some three kilometres (two miles) from the spot and heard the blast,” Jan Odhano, a rights activist in Jacobabad, told AFP.
“We rushed towards the spot. We saw people running here and there, some were crying and wailing, we could see blood on the clothes of some people.”
Most of the bodies he saw were children who appeared to be between eight and 15 years of age, he said, describing torn clothing and blackened flesh.
Provincial transport minister Mumtaz Jakharani, who was at the hospital, said protesters had gathered there with some damaging medical equipment.
“The doctors are scared of the agitating people,” provincial health minister Jam Mehtab Dahar told AFP.
“I call upon the protesters to calm down and help us treat the injured,” he added.
Witnesses said protesters were blocking roads at many spots in the city, the capital of Jacobabad district, while Khoro, the district officer, said he was trapped in his office by “charged” demonstrators who had set the entrance to it alight.
Some witnesses reported clashes between demonstrators and police.
Dahar confirmed that the injured were also sent to the hospital at the Shahbaz Airbase and the Jacobad Institute of Medical Sciences, with some airlifted to the nearby city of Larkana.
High alert
Pakistan had deployed some 10,000 troops and 6,000 paramilitary members to prevent sectarian violence during Moharram.
The holy month, which began Thursday, sees Shiites hold processions and gatherings to mourn the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala in Iraq in 680 AD.
Hussain is equally revered by Sunnis, but hardliners oppose the public mourning of his martyrdom.
Sectarian violence — in particular by Sunni hardliners against the Shiites that make up roughly 20 percent of Pakistan’s 200 million people — has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade.
Friday’s attack came a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a mosque, killing at least 11 Shiites including six children in the town of Chalgari in restive Baluchistan province.
In July the leader of an anti-Shiite group behind some of Pakistan’s worst sectarian atrocities was killed in a shoot-out with police, along with 13 other militants.
Malik Ishaq and his fellow Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants, including senior commanders, were shot dead in in Punjab.
However political and security analyst Hasan Askari told AFP Friday that the fresh wave of attacks against Shiites shows sectarian groups are still active.
“Apparently these groups have changed the tactics of their attacks,” he said. “They are now targeting smaller cities because of the extra security arrangements in big cities.”
Earlier this year, a brutal attack killed 45 Shiites in Karachi in May. Some officials pointed the finger at Islamic State, the jihadist group that has taken over large swathes of Iraq and Syria, despite the Pakistan government’s long-held stance that the group does not have a presence in the country.
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