Rockets kill 2 in Pakistan after Shi'ite procession
30 Jan 2007 13:18:53 GMT Source: Reuters
(Updates with 48 hurt in roof collapse) ISLAMABAD, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Rocket and mortar fire killed at least two people in Pakistan on Tuesday as a Shi'ite religious procession dispersed in a town known for sectarian violence, police and hospital officials said. Thirteen policemen and a civilian were wounded in the attack in Hangu, in North West Frontier Province, where a year ago 40 people were killed by a suicide bomber during an Ashura procession, the climax of the Islamic holy month of Muharram for followers of the Shi'ite sect. Senior administrator Fakkahar-e-Alam said the Shi'ites came under fire as this year's Ashura procession dispersed. "A curfew has been enforced in the city and there will be no more processions today," Alam said. The two people killed were Afghan refugees, said senior police official Mohammad Sharif. On the tenth day of Muharram, known as Ashura, Shi'ites beat themselves with swords and sharpened chains during processions to mourn the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet, during a battle in Kerbala, a city in modern-day Iraq, in AD 680. The roof of a building collapsed in a village near the eastern city of Lahore injuring 48 people who had been watching a procession in the street below, police said. Among the injured were 28 women, a police official said. There has been a spate of sectarian attacks in the days leading up to this year's Ashura that culminates on Tuesday. On Monday, a suicide bomber killed himself and two others in another northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, the third suicide attack in days. Also on Monday, two rockets struck close to a Shi'ite religious centre in the northwestern town of Bannu wounding 13 people. On Friday, a suicide bomber killed himself and a guard outside the Marriott hotel in Islamabad. And on Saturday, a suicide bomber killed 15 people, including a city police in the northwestern city of Peshawar, shortly before Shi'ite mourners were to begin a procession. Thousands of people have been killed in sectarian attacks by Sunni and Shi'ite militants in Pakistan since the 1980s. Shi'ites make up about 15 percent of the mostly Sunni Muslim country's population.
