Pakistan suicide bombing death toll rises to 15

A suicide attacker exploded a bomb among police officers on guard near a Shiite Muslim mosque in this north-western Pakistani city late today, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 30.

The city’s police chief was among the dead, officials said.

Paramilitary forces in armoured vehicles were deployed to patrol Peshawar after the attack that came as Pakistan’s minority Shiites started to commemorate their most important religious festival of Ashoura, often a target for sectarian violence.

Analysts say the alarming Sunni-Shiite fighting that has brought chaos to Iraq risks igniting tensions between the sects in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan.

President General Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in fighting al-Qaida, condemned the “terrorist attack” and ordered an immediate inquiry, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

The blast went off on a street corner in the crowded Qissakhwani Bazaar in an old quarter of Peshawar, the main city in north-western Pakistan, about 200 yards from the Imam Barga Najmul Hassan mosque from where Shiites had been preparing to start a procession.