Explosion kills dozens at Shiite mosque in Pakistan

An explosion ripped through a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan during Friday Prayer, killing at least 55 people and wounding at least 59 in an apparent suicide bombing, The New York Times quoted the police as saying.
The bombing in Shikarpur, about 300 miles north of Karachi, was the country’s worst sectarian attack in months. It offered further proof that extremists are spreading deeper into Sindh Province, into areas that had previously escaped the worst of Pakistan’s violence.
Television images from the scene showed bloodied worshipers being carried from the mosque in the city’s Lakhi Dar district.
The attack appeared to have been carried out by a suicide bomber, said Abdul Quddus, a police officer in Shikarpur.
Jundullah, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack. “Our target was the Shiite community,” Fahad Marwat, a spokesman for the group, said. “They are our enemies.”
Although sectarian violence has risen across Pakistan in recent years, such attacks have been relatively rare in Sindh, which has a long tradition of tolerance among religious groups.
But that harmony has come under threat with a recent expansion of sectarian groups across the province, which use mosques and seminaries to spread hatred of Shiites. One of the most prominent such groups, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, was banned by the Pakistani government in 2012.
In a statement, former President Asif Ali Zardari, who comes from Sindh Province, said he was “shocked and grieved beyond measure” by the bombing.
Though leaders in Sindh openly acknowledge the growing threat of sectarianism, they seem helpless to stop its expansion, drawing criticism from Shiites.
“It seems like the killing of Shiites makes no difference to them,” said Ali Hussain Naqvi, a senior official with Majlis Wahdat-al-Muslimeen, a Shiite political party.
The bombing on Friday coincided with a visit to Karachi, the provincial capital, by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in an attempt to resolve the turbulent security situation in that city.