Posted on 03/03/2004 3:03:42 AM PST by Cap Huff
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Troops patrolled the southern Pakistani city of Quetta Wednesday, imposing a curfew after an attack on minority Shi'ites killed 44 people and 13 more died in a stampede triggered by fears of religious violence.
Relatives of victims of Tuesday's gun and grenade massacre in Quetta had to rely on military vehicles to take them to hospital, where nearly 140 people lay wounded, some of them seriously.
Soldiers armed with automatic rifles and machine guns patrolled rubble-strewn streets and burned-out shops set alight by enraged Shi'ites in the city of 400,000 people.
Funerals were expected to be held under military guard later in the day.
In the remote tribal town of Para Chinar, at least 13 Shi'ite Muslim worshippers -- eight women and five children -- died Tuesday in a stampede during another ceremony to mark Ashura, one of the minority Muslim sect's holiest days.
Doctor Syed Amjad Hussain said the women panicked, thinking a power failure that put out the lights was instead a new attack by majority Sunni Muslim militants. They tried to rush out of a two-storey building, causing a staircase to collapse.
About 56 people, mainly women and children, were hurt.
The attack on the Shi'ite procession in Quetta was the worst sectarian violence in Pakistan since a suicide attack on a Shi'ite mosque in the city killed more than 57 people in July.
It coincided with bomb blasts that killed at least 170 people in Iraq's holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala and capital Baghdad that U.S. officials linked to al Qaeda.
Pakistani officials have not linked the events.
Shi'ite leaders suspect the Quetta attack was the work of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Sunni group with links to al Qaeda that has carried out many sectarian attacks before. Witnesses said the attackers' guns were painted with the group's name.
Police said two of the attackers blew themselves up when surrounded, but at least one was wounded and under police guard in hospital.
An intelligence source said the wounded suspect was a member of Lahkar-e-Jhangvi from the southern part of Punjab province. He said 13 people took part in the attack.
ANTI-AL QAEDA OPERATIONS
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told Reuters there was no indication of an al Qaeda link, but added: "You can never be too sure and we are looking at it from every angle.
"The high casualties were because in the panic people started firing from all sides," he said. "A lot of people died in crossfire." He said five policemen were among the dead.
The Quetta attack came despite heavy security with thousands of paramilitary troops deployed countrywide against sectarian violence.
It occurred against a backdrop of stepped-up military operations in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in pursuit of al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, and underscored the risks posed to President Pervez Musharraf in his frontline role in the U.S.-led "war on terror."
Political analyst and commentator Ayaz Amir said the attack may have been aimed at forcing Musharraf to relax the anti-al Qaeda operations and withdraw resources from the tribal region.
"When you want unrest in Pakistan, you are putting pressure on the government," he said. "And what is the government doing? It, along with America, is involved in a war on terror."
Quetta has long been a hotbed of Islamic militancy and has become a refuge for Taliban and allied Sunni militants forced out of Afghanistan by U.S.-led military action.
The attackers used automatic weapons and grenades against a crowd of many thousands of Shi'ites, who make up some 15 percent of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim nation of 150 million people.
Shi'ites rampaged through Quetta after the attack, burning more than 100 shops and sparking fears of a wider backlash.
State-run Pakistan Television said a high court judge had been appointed to head an inquiry and schools in Quetta would remain closed until Saturday.
Hundreds of people have died in violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Pakistan in recent years.
In more violence Tuesday, Ejaz Hussain Naqvi, provincial vice president of the outlawed Shi'ite group Tahreek-e-Jafria Pakistan, was shot dead by a Sunni mob in a tribal region some 375 miles northeast of Quetta.
(With reporting by Tahir Ikram and Aamir Ashraf)
On the Shiites, Zarqawi says:
"I mean that targeting and hitting [the Shiites] in [their] religious, political, and military depth will provoke them to show the Sunnis their rabies ? and bare the teeth of the hidden rancor working in their breasts. If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of these Sabeans."
There's actually much, much more. And no one - not even America - comes in for more wrath than the Shiites in Zarqawi's worldview (e.g., "[They are] the insurmountable obstacle, the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom.")
The coherently translated letter is right here in on the CPA web site:
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/transcripts/20040212_zarqawi_full.html
My gut instinct is telling me we are close to him.
Ditto.
We had a report last week of the SAS joining the hunt....someone has just pulled the gun out of the holster.
I hope someday we get to read about this hunt....because it will be better than any Tom Clancy novel.
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