A bomb ripped through a Shiite Muslim mosque deep in the interior of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, killing 12 worshippers, all of them women, and wounding several others, hospital officials said Friday.
It's not known who planted the powerful device that exploded near midnight Thursday in Bukker, about 300 miles southwest of the federal capital of Islamabad.
The bomb was apparently planted near the section of the mosque where women pray, said Mohammed Nisar, a doctor at the only hospital in Bukker where the dead and wounded were taken. Mosques are segregated.
"The bomb was planted on the women's side and all the dead were women," said Nisar, who was contacted by telephone.
Police have not made any arrests, but Pakistan, and eastern Punjab province in particular, has been wracked by religiously motivated violence in recent years. Hundreds of people have been killed in violent attacks between rival radical elements belonging to the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam.
Previous attacks against Shiite Muslims have been carried out by members of the violent Sipah-e-Sahaba or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet group, banned by Pakistan's military president Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The organization reviles Shiite Muslims as outside the pale of Islam.
Since January dozens of Shiite Muslims have been killed in Pakistan. Many of the deaths have been target killings and have occurred both in the Punjab province and in the country's southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
Police said they were investigating the explosion.
(China Daily April 26, 2002)
