Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims exchanged small-arms and rocket fire on Friday around a Pakistani town where 36 people died in a suicide bombing and other violence on the holiest day for minority Shi'ites.Thursday's bombing targeted a Shi'ite procession in the town of Hangu in North West Frontier Province to mark Ashura, which commemorates the martyrdom the Prophet Mohammad's grandson.
No group claimed responsibility, but Shi'ite leaders were quick to accuse Sunni militants blamed for decades of sectarian attacks as well as al Qaeda-linked Islamist violence.
The bombing sparked exchanges of fire between bands of Shi'ites and Sunnis in and around Hangu, which continued into Friday morning, said Maulana Khurshid Anwar, a cleric who led Thursday's procession.
He said the two sects also exchanged gunfire in the nearby mountain villages of Ibrahimzai and Shahu, where more than 100 rockets fell.
However, he said there were no reports of deaths in the exchanges, which came in Hangu despite a curfew imposed by army units sent to the town to restore order.
Mountain villages in North West Frontier are awash with weapons and disputes are often settled through violence.
One of the dozens of people wounded in Thursday's violence in Hangu died overnight in hospital in the nearby town of Kohat, bringing total deaths to 36, hospital officials said.
Pakistan has suffered Islamist sectarian violence for years, most of it directed by majority Sunni Muslims against Shi'ites.
However Hangu Mayor Ghani-ur-Rehman said on Thursday he did not believe this traditional rivalry was responsible and instead termed the attack "terrorism".
Analysts say that in recent years sectarian attacks by Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda have appeared to have a broader aim of destabilising the rule of President Pervez Musharraf and his alliance with Washington in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Pakistani Shi'ite leader Sajid Ali Naqvi called the Hangu incident "religious terrorism" and accused Musharraf's government of failing to rein in Sunni militants.