PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A suicide bomber ran into a crowd of mourners at the funeral of a slain Shiite leader in northwest Pakistan yesterday, killing 30 people and triggering riots by enraged mobs.
Witnesses spoke of horrifying scenes after the explosion rocked Dera Ismail Khan, a town with a history of sectarian violence on the edge of the Sunni-majority nation’s restive tribal areas.
Gulzar Hussain, 26, said he had been walking in the funeral procession for the late Sher Zaman, a local community leader shot dead a day earlier, when a man rushed into the center of the crowd.
Suddenly there was a deafening explosion. “All I could see after the blast were body parts lying in a pool of blood,” he said by telephone from his hospital bed.
“Everyone around me was injured, crying and moaning. I saw injured children crying with pain. It was the most horrible sight of my life. My foot was injured badly. It was a scene from a slaughter house with heaps of meat scattered all around.”
Saadullah Khan, the local police chief, said 30 people had died and 65 were injured.
Pakistan has suffered a series of attacks by militants, which have fanned international fears for the stability of the nuclear-armed nation.
There was no immediate claim for the blast, but police and witnesses blamed sectarian extremists. “We cannot immediately say who could be behind the bombing but it appeared to be linked with the ongoing sectarian attacks,” said Khan.
“The head and a foot of the suicide bomber has been found at the scene. The bomber appeared to be 20 years old with a beard,” he added.
The bombing came two weeks after 35 people died in a suspected suicide bomb attack on Shiites in the Punjab town of Dera Ghazi Khan, in what was one of Pakistan’s deadliest sectarian attacks. Troops took control of Dera Ismail Khan and imposed an indefinite curfew. Residents shut themselves in their homes, closing all shops and businesses, police said.
After the attack, mobs had fired bullets into the air, thrown stones at cars, ransacked shops, torched buses and set up roadblocks with burning tires in the dusty, low-rise town.
The chief district administrator, Syed Mohsin Shah, said the military has been called in to support police for restoration of law and order.
