Suicide bomber kills at least 22 in Pakistan

by Aamir Qureshi Aamir Qureshi – Sun Apr 5, 10:46 am ET

CHAKWAL, Pakistan (AFP) –

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shi'i religious gathering in the north of violence-wracked Pakistan Sunday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 40, police said.

The attacker struck at the gates of a Shii mosque where some 1,200 people were attending a religious gathering, police said.

"Twenty-two precious lives have been lost in this attack," provincial police chief Shaukat Javed told reporters.

"Now there are 17 people in the hospital and 10 seriously wounded have been shifted to Rawalpindi and other slightly wounded have been discharged from the hospital," he said.

Javed said a joint investigation team had been constituted to probe the attack.

The official said the suicide bomber appeared to be 15-year-old boy whose legs and head, with damage to the face, had been found at the blast site.

Provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah said the bomber could not enter the mosque and blew himself up at the entrance.

"The bomber was intercepted at the entrance otherwise he could have caused large scale casualties," Sanaullah said of the attack in the town of Chakwal, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) south of Islamabad.

"We have sent two helicopters to move the injured to hospitals in other cities."

An AFP photographer at the scene said the vast mosque remained intact after the blast, but wreckage of cars and motorcycles lay strewn around the boundary wall.

Senior police official Chaudhry Zulfiqar said officers prevented the attacker from entering the building.

"Our policemen deployed at the gate tried to stop the attacker from going inside where some 1,200 people were attending a majlis (Shiite religious meeting)," he told AFP.

President Asif Ali Zardari "strongly condemned" the bombing, which came just a day after at least 15 people died in two suicide attacks, and ordered authorities to find the perpetrators and punish them.

"The president deplored the attack and said such acts were being masterminded by people who were against the state and wanted to bring a bad name to the religion," his office said in a statement.

The nuclear-armed Muslim nation is under pressure from the United States, which has put it at the heart of efforts to defeat Al-Qaeda, to take decisive action against militants said to enjoy support from Pakistan's intelligence service.

One witness described hearing a "very loud blast" during a brief interval in the religious session when people were going in and out of the mosque.

"There was a huge blast and a lot of smoke. I rushed to the main gate and saw several bodies lying in a pool of blood and body parts scattered all around," Qazi Wafa told AFP by telephone.

"It was the most horrible scene of my life, but I immediately started helping efforts to get the wounded to hospital."

He said Shiites and Sunnis lived "like brothers" in the neighbourhood and that both were participating in the religious gathering.

Chakwal hospital was packed with victims and their relatives, many of whom were weeping, said an AFP photographer.

"The hospital is very crowded and most of the injured were being treated as they lay on the floor, it was chaos," he said.

Sectarian and militant violence has been on the rise in Pakistan over the past few years.

More than 1,700 people have been killed in a wave of bomb attacks since government forces fought gunmen holed up in a radical Islamabad mosque in July 2007.

Shiites account for some 20 percent of Pakistan's mostly Sunni Muslim population of 160 million.

Although the two groups usually coexist peacefully, more than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence since the late 1980s.