Article

2019-05-08 India-Pakistan

Blast near shrine in Pakistan, several dead

[Reuters] LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A bomb targeting police outside a major Sufi shrine in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday killed several people and wounded dozens, officials said.

The blast, one day after the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, took place close to the Data Darbar, one of the largest shrines in South Asia.

"It was an attack on police that left several dead and dozens of policemen and civilians injured. The target was police," said Syed Mubashir Hussain, a spokesman for the Lahore police.

The attack follows a period of relative calm in the city, where attacks were at one time common.

No casualty details were immediately available but the Dawn newspaper reported that at least three people had been killed.

"A rescue operation is under way and we have shifted 15 people to hospital," said Muhammad Farooq, a spokesman for the city’s rescue services.

Update at 12:30p.m. EDT from Al Ahram:

A bomb targeting Pak police outside a major Sufi shrine in the city of Lahore on Wednesday killed at least 10 people and maimed more than 20, officials said.

The blast, a day after the beginning of the Moslem holy month of Ramadan, went off at a police checkpoint near the Data Darbar, one of the largest Moslem shrines in South Asia, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors a year.

The attack was claimed by the Hizbul Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pak Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
, a movement that has been fighting the government for years. In a statement, the group said the attack targeted police and had been timed to avoid civilian casualties.

Sufis, who follow a mystical form of Islam that has been practised in South Asia for centuries, have been regularly attacked by hardline Sunni Moslem turbans in the past.

In 2010, two jacket wallahs struck the Data Darbar shrine killing 42 people and wounding 175, in an attack officials said was carried out by the Pak Taliban.

Militant violence has since declined sharply in Pakistain after a sustained crackdown following the country's deadliest attack in 2014, which killed more than 150 people, many children, at a school in the western city of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar

...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
Since an attack in a Lahore park targeting Christians celebrating Easter in 2016 killed more than 70 people, Pakistain's second largest city has been largely quiet although an attack last year killed nine people.

Police said a general security alert was in force but there had been no specific warning about a threat to the Data Darbar, which protected by heavy layers of security.

The complex contains the shrine of Syed Ali bin-Osman al-Hajvery, widely known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, an 11th century Sufi preacher originally from Ghazni in what is now Afghanistan.

Posted by Besoeker 2019-05-08 01:53|| || Front Page|| [11135 views ] Top
File under: TTP

#1 They, mostly, kill other Muslims?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-05-08 06:39|| 2019-05-08 06:39|| Front Page Top

#2 followed by a big blast in Kabul and somehow related by some logic I don't follow...

Posted by 3dc 2019-05-08 06:54|| 2019-05-08 06:54|| Front Page Top

#3 Its the great Sunni/Shia divide.

They are still fighting over who should succeed him almost 1200 years after his death.

But then some scholars say that Mohammed is an invention, especially when you consider the four oldest copies of the koran, in Egypt, and Yemen have been carbon dated to 200 years prior to the traditional date of his birth

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2019-05-08 11:15|| 2019-05-08 11:15|| Front Page Top

#4 See the update, above. They’re Sufis, not Shiites, which is just as bad to the Pakistani Taliban. The divide between Sunni mystics and non-mystics is only about a thousand years old instead of the 1300 between Sunnis and Shiites.

Predate? I didn’t realize that, Sock Puppet of Doom. Do you have a link?

Posted by trailing wife 2019-05-08 12:38|| 2019-05-08 12:38|| Front Page Top

#5 True, Sock Puppet. In fact around the time of the second Umayad ruler, there were as many mohameds as there are second comings in the third world running around.

Posted by Dron66046 2019-05-08 12:58|| 2019-05-08 12:58|| Front Page Top

#6 You have to be careful about carbon-dating early manuscripts. Old parchments (or vellum) pages were 'scraped' for reuse. Cloth pages were boiled to remove the ink, too.

Although it would not surprise me that there weren't multiple Mo's kicking about. And a bunch of flying horses, too.

Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-05-08 16:58|| 2019-05-08 16:58|| Front Page Top

#7 It wouldn't be Ramadan without a bunch of people dying.

Although it would not surprise me that there weren't multiple Mo's kicking about

It'd be funny if Mo was actually a common name way back when. Kinda like how every landscaping crew in California has at least one guy name Jesus.

Posted by SteveS 2019-05-08 19:39|| 2019-05-08 19:39|| Front Page Top

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