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30 killed in Pakistan suicide blast

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Published: 15:34, 16 February 2017   Update: 15:18, 26 July 2020
30 killed in Pakistan suicide blast

International Desk: At least 30 people were killed and 50 others were injured when a bomb ripped through a crowded Sufi shrine Thursday in southern Pakistan, officials and local media said.

The bombing struck the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan in Sindh province, some 200 kilometres (124 miles) northeast of the provincial capital Karachi.

"We have received reports about a blast and (are) rushing to the site," Qazi Shahid, deputy local government commissioner for nearby Hyderabad, told AFP.

A police source said that a suicide bomber had entered the shrine and blown himself up among the devotees, adding the shrine was crowded on a Thursday, considered a sacred day to pray at the shrine.

Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine is located in Sehwan City of Sindh’s Jamshoro district.

At 7.20pm (Dubai time), Geo TV reported at least 30 people were feared dead.

Police said it was a suicide attack.

“The blast occurred within the premises of the shrine, we have declared emergency in hospitals and are shifting the injured to nearby hospitals,” Deputy Commissioner Munawar Mahesar told ARY News.

Provincial Health Minister Sikandar Mandhro told media that the blast occurred during “Dhamaal”, a traditional Sufi dance held at the shrine visited daily by thousands.

Eye witnesses too claimed that the blast occurred within the premises of the shrine.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Earlier on Thursday, Pakistani counter-terrorism police raided a militant hideout and killed six suspected members of a Taliban faction that has launched a new campaign of violence against the government, police said on Thursday.

Since Monday, several bomb attacks across the country have shattered a period of improving security, underscoring how militant groups still pose a threat in the nuclear-armed country of 180 million people.

The Counter Terrorism Department in Punjab province said its officers surrounded a hideout of the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction in the city of Multan late on Wednesday and ordered the suspects inside to surrender.

"But the terrorists started firing at the raiding party and threw explosives," a spokesman for the department, who the unit does not identify for security reasons, said in a statement.

Six militants were killed while three or four escaped under cover of darkness, the department added. Two hand grenades, two automatic rifles and two pistols were recovered.

The militant faction claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack near the Punjab provincial assembly in the city of Lahore on Monday that killed 13 people and wounded more than 80.

Agencies

risingbd/DHAKA/Feb 16, 2017/Amirul

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