KARACHI, 12 April 2006 — Scores of people, including prominent Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal leader Haji Hanif Billo, were killed when a bomb went off at a religious gathering in Karachi late yesterday. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said 45 people were killed and over 100 injured but unofficial toll was put at 67. Abbas Qadri, Shah Turabul Haq and Irshad Bhatti — leaders and prominent members of religious parties were seriously injured. Police later confirmed the death of several leaders.
A suicide bomber triggered off the blast when speakers were offering Maghreb prayers. Ambulances were ferrying the injured to hospital, witnesses said, adding that limbs were seen scattered in the area.
Witnesses also said the blast sparked panic among thousands of people who had gathered at the city’s Nishtar Park to celebrate the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
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.
The blast was believed to have been centered close to the stage where prayer leaders from Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, had been standing. Authorities had taken tough crowd control measures yesterday, two days after 29 women and children died in a stampede at a mosque.
“We have taken all possible steps to discourage people from gathering at congested places and indoors so that there should be no repeat of Sunday’s incident,” senior Karachi police official Manzoor Mughal said. Thousands of police and paramilitary rangers were deployed in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, to ensure the safe entry and exit of people during religious gatherings, Mughal said.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims including women and children take part in religious processions and gatherings.
The stampede on Sunday at the Faizan-e-Madinah mosque in Karachi happened when a girl fell down the stairs as around 50,000 women and children were leaving a ceremony ahead of the festivities.
An investigation into the stampede — the worst in the country’s recent history — was expected to be completed within a week, said Mughal, who is heading the probe.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf yesterday sought the support of religious scholars in defeating extremism and terrorism in the country. “They should also project the true values and real essence of Islam, which stands for peace, tolerance, and harmony,” said Musharraf at a function in Islamabad marking the birth anniversary of the Prophet.
Reiterating his government’s resolve to fight terrorism with “force” and counter extremism with a “holistic strategy”, President Musharraf said that the twin menaces of terrorism and extremism are detrimental to progress and development.
“Sectarian organizations, which are fanning hatred will not be allowed to operate,” he declared. “Islam, which stands for tolerance, peace and harmony and modernization, is being viewed in the West as a religion of militancy, intolerance and extremism.”
