Police see al Qaeda link in Karachi mosque bombing
Tue May 31, 2005
By Faisal Aziz
KARACHI (Reuters) - Eleven people were killed in a night of violence in Karachi when a suicide attack on a mosque blamed on a group linked to al Qaeda spiralled into a riot that burned to death six at American fast-food outlet KFC.
Angry Shi'ite Muslims set fire to the restaurant in revenge after five people were killed and 18 wounded in the Monday night suicide bomb blast at a Shi'ite mosque in Karachi's middle-class Gulshan-e-Iqbal district, police said on Tuesday.
The mob torched the KFC outlet minutes after the blast at the mosque, and then ransacked a hospital, two petrol stations and burned more than a dozen vehicles.
The latest violence in one of America's allies in its war on terrorism came three days after a suicide bombing at a festival in Islamabad killed 19 people, mostly Shi'ite Muslims, the worst-ever attack in Pakistan's capital.
A crowd of Shi'ite youths chanting "Down with America" tried to set to fire to another KFC outlet on Tuesday during a funeral for a victim of Monday's attack, but police repelled them with batons.
Police also detained about two dozen protesters who threw rocks at cars, shops and police.
Shi'ite mobs often target symbols of U.S. influence after sectarian attacks as they accuse the government of failing to act to prevent religious violence.
Police said intelligence agents suspect Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned Sunni Muslim militant group with ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, had planned the mosque attack.
"The pattern of this attack has many similarities with attacks they have carried out in the recent past," said the district's police chief, Asif Ajaz Sheikh. "We are working on several other leads too."
FEARED GROUP
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's most feared underground militant groups. Its members have been implicated in attacks on Western targets in Karachi, including the kidnap and murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
The group has also been blamed for two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf and carried out dozens of deadly attacks on the minority Shi'ite community.
More than 100 people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks between Sunnis and Shi'ites in the past year alone.
Most of Pakistan's 150 million people are Sunni and about 15 percent are Shi'ites.
Musharraf said those to blame for the Karachi attack would be caught and punished. He appealed for "sectarian harmony and brotherhood," said a statement carried by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Two assailants, including a suicide bomber, a policeman and two worshippers died in the mosque attack and at least 18 people were wounded, four seriously, police said.
One of the attackers who survived -- a man who identified himself as Muhammad Jameel of Karachi's low-income Orangi Town neighborhood -- was being questioned by police.
Authorities have not identified any suspects in the Islamabad attack but analysts say Sunni militants have revived sectarian rivalry with Shi'ites to destabilize Musharraf's government.
(Additional reporting by Aamir Ashraf)
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