Karachi, May 31
A bomb blast inside a Shi'itc mosque during evening prayers killed at least
14 persons today in Karachi, where a senior cleric from Pakistan's majority Sunni sect was gunned down a day earlier.
Doctors at three city hospitals said they had counted
14 dead so far, while an angry crowd milling around in the darkness outside the cordoned-off mosque talked of more bodies inside the shattered building. The doctors said about
55 had been injured.
Fears of a fresh round of inter-Muslim sectarian violence ran high in Karachi after the killing on Sunday of Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, a radical Sunni preacher, and the police was deployed at mosques in anticipation of a backlash.
The blast at the Ali Raza Imam Bargah mosque was less than a mile away from where Shamzai, a pro-Taliban cleric who called for jehad, or holy war, against US, was killed. —
Reuters
