Pakistan blast kills 15, wounds 125

A suicide attacker detonated a powerful bomb in a crowded Shi'ite mosque in the business district of the Pakistani city of Karachi yesterday, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 125, police said.

The mosque was packed for Friday afternoon prayers when it was shattered by the fourth and worst bomb attack in five days in Pakistan, a frontline state in the US-led war on terror.

President Pervez Musharraf called the attack a "heinous act of terrorism" and ordered an immediate inquiry.

The mosque was badly damaged. Blood stained the floor and walls and pieces of flesh were scattered around.

It was just the latest attack on a Shi'ite mosque in Pakistan, which has been racked for decades by violence between the minority Islamic sect and militants in the Sunni majority.

Angry Shi'ites went on a rampage in central Karachi, pelting cars and shops with stones and setting fire to a state-run petrol station, several vehicles, a building and a police post near the mausoleum of Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Karachi police chief Tariq Jameel said 15 people were killed in the mosque bombing. Officials said another 125 were wounded.

"It appears to be a suicide attack," said provincial security adviser Aftab Sheikh. "The explosives were attached to the body of the bomber who was apparently in the third row of worshippers."

Worshipper Ali Abbas, his clothes smeared with blood, said he was in the third row when the bomb exploded and something hit him hard on the back.

"It was part of a body." he said. "There was chaos. All of us ran outside, jumping over the injured and human remains."

Rohena Hasan, a doctor at the state-run Civil Hospital said more than 20 people were in serious condition.

Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali vowed strict punishment of the perpetrators. "Those who committed this cold-blooded murder cannot be termed Muslims as Islam shuns violence," the official APP news agency quoted him as saying.

Shi'ites demanded protection for their community. "We are at the mercy of terrorists who are getting bolder because they are not being punished," said Shi'ite cleric Hasan Turabi. "Now we have to defend ourselves."