The death toll from a suicide bomb attack on a Sunni Muslim prayer meeting rose this morning to 57 in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, where officials said they were on high alert for more violence.
Yesterday's strike by two suspected suicide bombers was the worst ever on Karachi, which has been plagued by sectarian violence and Islamist militant organisations angered by President Pervez Musharraf's support for the US.
"The death toll has now risen to 57, while there are also reports that some people are still missing," said spokesman of the provincial Sindh government, said. "Our initial investigations suggest that there were at least two suicide bombers involved in the attack. We have found the body parts, including the heads, of the suspected attackers."
The attackers struck while some 15,000 worshippers from a Sunni Muslim organisation, Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, had gathered for prayers in a city park at the end of a day that marked the anniversary of Prophet Mohammad's birth.
Among the dead were several locally well-known leaders of Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, which has hundreds of thousands of followers among Pakistan's dominant Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims, raising fears of a violent backlash.
The city was tense and deserted the morning after, with police and paramilitary troops patrolling roads shorn of public transport and almost all filling stations were closed, covered with thick clothes and barriers to avoid any attack.
Karachi has been one of the main battlegrounds for sectarian violence between Pakistan's Sunni Muslim majority and minority Shi'ite Muslims over the past two decades.