Attackers kill 40 in Pakistani procession

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Three assailants lobbed grenades and sprayed bullets at a procession of Shiite Muslim worshippers in the southwestern city of Quetta on Tuesday, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 150, officials said. Two of the attackers then blew themselves up.

The attack came on the Shiite holy day of Ashoura, which is marked by processions commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past 15 years in Pakistan has left more than 1,200 dead. Sunnis make up 77 percent of the country's population and Shiites make up 20 percent.

According to witnesses and government officials, the three attackers threw grenades and fired from a rooftop as a Shiite procession passed through a congested neighborhood in Quetta, a city of over half a million people.

"I heard gunfire followed by an explosion," Mohammad Rahim Kakar, the city's mayor, told the state-run news media. A gun battle erupted between the attackers and armed guards accompanying the procession, causing a stampede that ended in scores of deaths and injuries.

Two of the attackers blew themselves up in the crowd as the police moved in, the mayor said. Officials said an attacker who was wounded was arrested.

After the initial clash, the city turned into a battlefield, as fighting broke out between Sunnis and Shiites. Angry Shiites ransacked shops and set cars and public property on fire. As smoke billowed from damaged buildings, and shattered glass lay strewn across streets, police and paramilitary forces imposed a curfew to calm the city.

The Quetta attack followed an incident on Saturday, when a suicide bomber killed himself and injured three worshippers in an attack on a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Rawalpindi.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, one Shiite was killed and several were wounded during an exchange of gunfire between members of the two sects in Mandi Bahauddin, a small farming town in eastern Pakistan.

President Pervez Musharraf has vowed a crackdown against Islamic militancy and banned several sectarian groups. In December, he escaped two assassination attempts which authorities suspect were carried out by religious militants.

Pakistani officials had been bracing for an attack on Shiite Muslims since last October, when Maulana Azam Tariq, a hard-line Sunni leader, was assassinated on the outskirts of Islamabad, the nation's capital. Shiite extremists are believed to have carried out that attack.

Tensions between the Sunnis and Shiites in Quetta have flared several times recently. In July 2003, gunmen killed more than 50 worshippers at a Shiite mosque.

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