Home Latest News Bike Bomb Kills Two Outside Karachi Mosque

Bike Bomb Kills Two Outside Karachi Mosque

by AFP
File Photo. Rizwan Tabassum—AFP

File Photo. Rizwan Tabassum—AFP

Another seven injured in blast targeting sub-sect of Shia community.

At least two people were killed and seven others wounded after a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded outside a mosque in Karachi on Friday, police said.

The blast took place in the congested Aram Bagh area outside a mosque belonging to the Bohra community, a sub-sect of minority Shia Muslims.

Pakistan has been hit by a rising wave of sectarian violence in recent years, most of it carried out by militant Sunni Muslim groups targeting Shias.

A police spokesman said two were killed in the blast and seven wounded.

Saif-ud-Din, a witness, said people were coming out of the mosque after Friday prayers when there was a huge blast and many people fell on the ground. “I was inside the mosque when the bomb exploded and I saw people falling to the ground,” Din said.

Umer Khatab, a senior officer at the police Counter Terrorism Department, told reporters that about two kilograms of explosives were used in the bomb, which was detonated with a timer. “The bomb was planted to target the people coming out of the mosque,” Khatab said.

Many worshippers in bloodstained clothes gathered outside the mosque, searching for relatives. The blast ripped through the shutters of several nearby shops and shattered windows.

In January, 61 people were killed in a suicide bombing carried out by a Taliban splinter group at a Shia mosque, the deadliest sectarian incident to hit the country since 2013.

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