Pakistan: A bomb ripped through a gathering of Shia pilgrims in the Pakistani capital yesterday morning killing 20 people, wounding dozens more and raising fears of a surge in sectarian violence.
A suicide bomber rushed into a tent in the Bari Imam shrine, just one mile from the prime minister's Islamabad residence, during a Koran recitation.
"We were all sitting down when a man ran in very aggressively. When he reached about 10 feet from the stage, there was a blast," said Muhammad Ibrahim, a pilgrim in a blood-splattered tunic.
As he spoke, rescue workers carried away the injured while forensic investigators searched through rags still covered in lumps of flesh.
Pilgrims had travelled to the shrine from across the country for an annual five-day festival which ended yesterday.
The bomber's target may have been Hamid Moosvi, one of Pakistan's most senior Shia leaders, who had been due to speak moments later.
"It was meant to kill me," he said, arriving at the scene amid tight security three hours later. "The people who did this are the enemies of humanity and love. Sunnis and Shias created Pakistan, now we must protect it together."
A string of sectarian massacres has taken place across Pakistan over the past year, usually inside mosques or during religious festivals.
An attack on a Shia shrine in southwestern Baluchistan province in March claimed at least 29 lives. Over the preceding year, at least 144 others died in five similar incidents.
The violence is mostly perpetrated by Sunni extremists, some thought to have links with al-Qaeda and other adherents of the austere, Saudi-inspired, Wahhabi school of Islam.
Wahhabis disapprove of mystic practices such as shrine visiting and saint worship which remain popular among Pakistani Sunnis and Shias.
Yesterday's bloodshed came at the end of another otherwise successful week for president Pervez Musharraf, who further advanced the peace process with India.
He was "saddened" by the attack, he told reporters. "Pakistan needs to show moderation according to Islam." But critics say the violence is partly of his making. Until 2002, Islamabad supported militant groups fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir. They are widely suspected of continuing the fight through sectarian violence.
Meanwhile, thousands of Islamists rallied across Pakistan to protest against alleged desecration of the Koran by US forces at Guantánamo Bay.
The rallies were called by hardline Islamic groups opposed to Pakistan's support for the US-led war on terrorism.
"We condemn sacrilege of the Koran by the US extremists," said a banner held by women at a rally in Islamabad attended by about 5,000 people in front of the parliament building about a kilometre from the scene of the blast.
Protesters in the city of Quetta burned effigies of President Bush and his key allies, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
"The desecration of Koran is a part of the conspiracies against Muslims," pro-Taliban leader and cleric Fazal-ur-Rehman told a rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar, close to the Afghan border.
Similar protests were staged in Karachi, Multan and other cities.
- additional reporting Guardian Service, Reuters