KARACHI, 9 May 2004 — A suicide bombing at a mosque triggered sectarian clashes in this volatile city in southern Pakistan yesterday, as rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims exchanged gunfire, killing at least one passerby, police said.

Two other people were wounded in the unrest which occurred after Shiites mourning worshipers killed in Friday’s blast pelted a Sunni mosque with stones in Karachi’s Sohrab Goth district, said police officer Latif Siddiqui.

Police fired tear gas shells to disperse the crowds.

Friday’s bombing, which killed 14 people and wounded more than 200, was the latest in a series of sectarian and terrorist attacks in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.

Police have released a sketch of the suspected suicide bomber, dressed like a Shiite cleric, based on descriptions from survivors. It shows a man aged about 30 with a short black beard and mustache, wearing a black turban and robe.

Earlier yesterday, police detained 50 Shiite youths, as unrest triggered by the attack continued with arson and stone-throwing around the city.

Some of the protesters suffered minor injuries in scuffles with police, who struggled to control the crowds.

Protesters set fire to two police posts in Sohrab Goth and smashed windows of several shops in a market. They have also burned vehicles and the office of a state-run gas company.

Senior investigator Manzoor Mughal said police were trying to identify the maimed body of the bomber, thought to have used about three kilograms of high explosive in the attack.

“The statements given to us by some injured worshipers and other evidence make us believe that a man who was dressed like a Shiite cleric was in fact the suicide bomber,” Mughal said. He gave no other details.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack on the mosque inside the Sindh Madrassatul Islam school, which came two months after Sunni radicals attacked a Shiite religious procession in the southwestern city of Quetta, killing more than 40 people.

Pakistani newspapers expressed outrage at Friday’s attack, and criticized the government for failing to stop the violence — which has repeatedly scarred the country since it became a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism in late 2001.

“How many attacks must take place for the government to realize that something is missing in its anti-terrorism strategy?” Dawn said in an editorial.

The English-language daily called for tough action against those religious schools and prayer leaders in Pakistan preaching “sectarian hatred and militancy.”

The bombing came weeks after police seized a cache of weapons and explosives during a raid on a hideout of an outlawed militant group in Karachi. Though police did not make any arrests, authorities at the time said they feared suicide and other bomb attacks.

Police and paramilitary rangers were patrolling this city of 15 million, where relatives started burying the dead at mosques yesterday. Businesses were shuttered and traffic was light because of the rioting.

About 80 percent of Pakistan’s 150 million people are Sunni,. The vast majority live together in peace, but small radical groups on both sides frequently target each other’s places of worship and leaders.

Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf condemned the attack as a “heinous act of terrorism.” In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Pakistan to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“The secretary-general is appalled by the news of yet another attack in a place of worship,” said his spokesman Fred Eckhard. “No political or other cause can justify brutal acts of indiscriminate violence against civilians.”