By Faisal Aziz
Karachi - Eleven people were killed in a night of violence here when a suicide attack on a mosque blamed on al-Qaeda supporters ended in six people being burnt to death at American fast-food outlet KFC.
Angry Shi'as started the fire in revenge after five people were killed and 18 wounded in the Monday night suicide bomb blast at a mosque in middle-class Gulshan-e-Iqbal district, police said on Tuesday.
The KFC attack came just minutes after the blast at the mosque. Angry Shi'a youths also attacked a hospital, two petrol stations and burned more than a dozen vehicles.
| Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's most feared groups |
Intelligence agents said they suspect Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned Sunni Muslim militant group, as the perpetrators of the mosque attack.
"The pattern of this attack has many similarities with attacks they have carried out in the recent past," said police chief Asif Ajaz Sheikh.
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Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's most feared groups. Its members have been implicated in attacks on Western targets in Karachi, including the kidnap and murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
The group has also been blamed for two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf and carried out dozens of deadly attacks on Pakistan's minority Shias.
Most of Pakistan's 150 million people are Sunni and about 15 percent are Shi'as. More than 100 people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks between Sunnis and Shias in the past year alone.
Two assailants, including a suicide bomber, a policeman and two worshippers died in the mosque attack and 18 people were wounded, police said.
One of the attackers who survived - identified as Muhammad Jameel of Karachi's poor Orangi Town - was being questioned by police.
The attacks are the latest violence to hit one of Washington's main allies in its war on terror.
They came three days after a suicide bombing at a Muslim festival in Islamabad killed 19 people, mostly Shias, the worst-ever attack in the capital.
Authorities have not identified any suspects in the Islamabad attack but analysts say Sunnis have revived sectarian rivalry with Shias to destabilise Musharraf's government.
Hours before the mosque attack, a provincial leader from the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Islamic opposition alliance in Karachi was killed.
Aslam Mujahid, deputy chief of Jamaat-e-Islami in the city, was kidnapped early on Monday and his bullet-riddled body was later found in an abandoned car east of the city.
Mairaj-ul-Huda, head of Jamaat-e-Islami's Karachi wing, said the party suspected the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a rival regional party that is a member of the governing national coalition, of being behind the killing.
Shia mobs often target symbols of US influence after sectarian attacks as they accuse the government of failing to act to prevent religious violence. - Reuters
- This article was originally published on page 2 of Cape Times on June 01, 2005
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