PAKISTAN: Eight dead in suspected sectarian attack

Record ID: 354439

  • Title: PAKISTAN: Eight dead in suspected sectarian attack
  • Date: 7th October 2005
  • Summary: MORE OF WOMEN WAILING OVER DEAD BODIES
  • Embargoed: 22nd October 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAAEVG0XTTU2ED7EFV8GN1HCV9D
  • Story Text: Masked gunmen fired on worshippers of a minority Islamic sect in central Pakistan on Friday, killing at least eight and wounding 18, officials and eyewitnesses said.
    The attack took place at a religious centre near the town of Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab province when the adherents of the Ahmadi sect were gathered for dawn prayers.
    Ahmadis were declared non-Muslim heretics in Pakistan in 1974, and 10 years later barred from using Islamic forms of worship. Human rights groups say they are persecuted. I was standing in the front because I was leading the prayers. Sounds of shots started coming from the back, so around," Syed Sadiq Ahmed, who was leading the prayer, told Reuters in the courtyard of the centre.
    "I ducked behind the dias and saved my life." Inside the hall of the centre, jute prayer mats were stained with blood while women wailed and beat their chests in neighbouring houses where the bodies were moved. Mong is a small town of around 20,000 people. Up to 100 Ahmadi families live in a cluster of houses near their religious centre, residents said.
    Places of worship have been targeted in the past, but Friday's attack, on the second day of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, was the first in several years. Hundreds of people have been killed in Muslim sectarian violence in recent years, but most incidents involve militants from majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite sects. In July, President Pervez Musharraf, who is fighting religious extremism at home after joining the U.S.-led war on terrorism, launched a fresh crackdown, particularly targeting preachers of hate.
    Hundreds of militants, preachers and activists, mainly from sectarian groups, were detained after revelations that three of the four suicide bombers in the July 7 attacks in London were young British Muslims of Pakistani descent. At least one of them had visited an Islamist school or madrasa in Pakistan.
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