SHOOT-OUTS between political rivals killed three people yesterday, marring the first general elections in Pakistan since a 1999 military coup led by President Pervez Musharraf ended democratic rule.

A bomb ripped through a Shi’ite Muslim mosque deep in the interior of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, killing 12 worshippers, all of them women, and wounding several others, hospital officials said today.

A man convicted of killing an Iranian diplomat 10 years ago has been hanged in Pakistan.