At least 47 killed by blast in Pakistan

KARACHI - A bomb targeting Sunni Muslims killed at least 47 people and wounded dozens in the Pakistani city of Karachi as they gathered to celebrate the anniversary of Prophet Mohammad's birth, officials said.

"The blast shook the earth. It was like hell," Mohammad Ehtesham, a 70-year-old worshipper in the park where the blast took place, told Reuters.

"We were about to finish our prayers when blast went off ... It was so strong," said Ali Nasir, a young man among the wounded.

Soon after, angry youths, some of them armed, went on a rampage, setting a petrol station and cars ablaze and firing on police and paramilitary troops as they tried to reach Nishtar Park, in the heart of the city's commercial district and close to the mausoleum of Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The blast was believed to have been centred close to the stage where prayer leaders from a Sunni organisation, Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, had been standing.

Police confirmed several leaders of Jamaat were killed. The religious movement has a following of hundreds of thousands of people.

"It is an act of terrorism," deputy inspector-general of police investigation, Manzoor Mughal, told Reuters.

The venue had been checked by security beforehand.

"There is high probability that it was suicide attack because we were on very high alert," the Sindh provincial home minister, Rauf Siddiqui, told Reuters.

Television pictures showed dead bodies lying on the ground and wounded being taken to hospitals in vans after the explosion.

"It was a sad incident in which 47 innocent people were killed," Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told state-run television.

Police and provincial health officials said scores of people were wounded, including journalists and photographers covering the prayer meeting, and hospital authorities called for blood donors to cope with the emergency.

Youths, many wearing green head bands, roamed streets in neighbourhoods well away from the bomb site, pelting stones, burning tyres and forcing shopkeepers to lower their shutters.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but sectarian violence between Pakistan's Sunni Muslim majority and minority Shi'ite Muslims has plagued the country, and Karachi in particular, for the past two decades.

In February, at least 40 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a Shi'ite procession in the town of Hangu in the country's North West Frontier Province.

Pakistan launched a crackdown on sectarian militant groups and preachers of hatred last July, but just last week in the capital Islamabad 5000 supporters of a banned Sunni hardline group held a rally organised under another name.

Karachi suffered another tragedy on Sunday when at least 30 women and children were trampled and crushed to death in a stampede at a mosque where about 20,000 worshippers had gathered for prayers to mark the month of the Prophet's birth.

The month of Rabi-ul-Awal is celebrated particularly by Pakistan's dominant Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims.

- REUTERS