Mourners riot at Karachi bomb attack funerals
Police clashed with rioting mourners today as thousands attended the funerals of 19 people killed in an apparent suicide bombing that ripped through a crowded Shiite Muslim mosque in Karachi, the latest terrorist attack to hit Pakistan’s largest city.
About 200 angry Shiites set fire to three buses, a bank, bus company offices and shops housed in one building a few doors down from the mosque hit in yesterday’s bombing.
Hundreds of police fired tear gas at the crowd along a major highway in the southern city of Karachi.
Fearing sectarian clashes between rival Shiite and Sunni Muslims, thousands of police and paramilitary rangers were on maximum alert, and were also equipped with live ammunition, although there were no reports of firing.
Two processions of thousands of mourners set off in different directions after prayers at the wrecked Imam Bargah Ali Raza mosque, leaving the rioters behind. The unrest began after the mob started stoning police.
President General Pervez Musharraf pledged action to stem the wave of bloodletting. The bombing ripped through the mosque during evening prayers, also injuring at least 42 people, police said.
The attack sparked nighttime rioting by hundreds of enraged Shiite youths who burned shops, cars, a bank and a government building and blocked highways and the main rail line. A shootout between rioters and police left three more people dead.
No one claimed responsibility for the bombing. But Karachi has been wracked by violence between the Sunni Muslim majority and Shiite minority, and the attack was seen as revenge for the assassination on Sunday of a senior Sunni Muslim cleric, Nazamuddin Shamzai, that also triggered street battles between youths and police.
