Gunmen fire on Shiite parade in Pakistan, eight dead

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2004

QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP) — At least eight people were killed in an attack on a parade by Shiite Muslims observing the holy day of Ashura in Pakistan's southwest city Quetta.

"At least eight people have been killed and scores of people injured in firing on a procession," Shoaib Suddle, police chief of Baluchistan province, told AFP on Tuesday.

The apparently sectarian attack is the second on Quetta's Shiite community, a minority in Sunni-dominated Pakistan, in less than a year. Last July gunmen killed 48 worshippers as they prayed at a city mosque.

Tuesday's attack triggered rampages by angry mobs, who set fire to shops and the office of a local newspaper, burnt tyres and blocked roads, Quetta's mayor Mohammad Rahim Karkar, who uses only one name, said.

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