World | Pakistan
Eight die in attack on funeral march
At least eight people were killed and 30 injured in a bomb attack on a funeral procession on Friday in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan's northwestern province, police said.
- By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent
- Published: 23:30 November 21, 2008
Islamabad: At least eight people were killed and 30 injured in a bomb attack on a funeral procession on Friday in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan's northwestern province, police said.
The attack targeted people taking the coffin of a slain Shiite elder to a graveyard on the outskirts of the city.
Deputy Police Superintendent Ehasan Ullah said the the roadside bomb was detonated by a remote controlled device.
Yesterday's victims were attending the funeral of cleric Allama Nazir Shah Naqvi, who was shot dead earlier in the day.
The attacks were aimed at igniting sectarian unrest, provincial information minister Iftikhar Hussain said in Peshawar, capital of the North Western Frontier Province, where army is engaged in operations against militants in tribal areas and the Swat valley.
Reports said sporadic incidents of exchange of fire and arson occurred in Dera Ismail Khan following the funeral bomb resulting in injuries to a number of people, but police controlled the situation in the tense city.
The attack was followed by a riot in which an angry mob burned shops and vehicles and pelted police with rocks.
Wave of violence
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is already undergoing a wave of violence that risks destabilising the country as the West seeks its support in fighting Al Qaida and Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The growing presence of Al Qaida and the Taliban, both of whom are overwhelmingly Sunni, in northwestern Pakistan has raised tensions with minority Shiites in the region. Militants have concentrated their fire on security forces and on US troops on the other side of the Afghan border.
However, Pakistani officials say their ranks have swelled by banned Pakistani extremist groups that view Shiites as heretics.
Some of the 28 people wounded were in critical condition, said Fareed Mehsud, a doctor at a city hospital.
Dera Ismail Khan is about 100km from Pakistan's tribal areas, from where militants have expanded their influence over the past several years.
American forces in Afghanistan are believed to have staged about 20 missile strikes on militant targets in Pakistan since August, including one on Wednesday, which for the first time hit a target beyond the tribal areas.
Pakistan's pro-Western government called in the US ambassador on Thursday to protest the strikes, which it says undermine public support for its own efforts against extremism.
Elsewhere in Pakistan's border region, a suicide bomber attacked a mosque where government-backed anti-militant tribesmen were praying late on Thursday, killing eight, including the head of the group, officials said.
In Afghanistan, a suicide bomber rammed the gate of an army base in the southern province of Zabul yesterday, killing three civilians and seriously wounding four Afghan soldiers, an official said.
Meanwhile, Pakistani fighter jets killed 14 Taliban militants yesterday when they bombarded hideouts in a restive northwest tribal area, officials said.
The rebels were killed in two areas of Bajaur district, part of the troubled region bordering Afghanistan, local government official Mohammad Jamil said.
"The airstrike killed 14 militants and wounded 10 others," Jamil said.
It was not immediately possible to independently verify the death toll.
Pakistan's army also claimed on Wednesday it killed 17 militants, including two Uzbeks, as part of its ongoing offensive in Bajaur.
The country's northwestern tribal belt became a stronghold of hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after a US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
The Pakistani military is fighting Taliban and Al Qaida-linked militants in Bajaur, where officials say more than 1,500 rebels have been killed and hundreds more captured since August.
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