SECURITY WAS tightened in the Pakistani city of Lahore yesterday after two suicide bombers killed 42 people and injured 200 more at a Sufi shrine.
The suicide bombings, the first for a month in Pakistan, undermine government claims that they are turning the tide in the war against the country’s militants.
Hundreds of devotees were visiting the marble shrine of the 11th-century Persian Sufi saint, Hazrat Syed Ali bin Usman Hajweri, who is also commonly known as Data Gunj Bakhsh, in Lahore when the attackers struck late on Thursday night.
The first bomber detonated his explosives in an underground room where visitors sleep and wash themselves before praying. Minutes later, a second bomber struck upstairs in a large courtyard in front of the shrine as people tried to flee.
“It was a horrible scene,” said Mohammed Nasir, a volunteer security guard. “There were dead bodies all around with blood, and people were crying.”
The killings provoked an outpouring of anger among people who believe the government could do more to tackle the extremists – some of whom they once supported.
Protesters gathered outside the shrine yesterday, blaming lax security for the high death toll.
“We have always remained peaceful, but our patience should not be tested any more,” said Raghib Naeemi, an anti-Taliban cleric whose outspoken father was killed in a suicide attack in Lahore last year.
“The government should not just ban the names of the terrorist groups, but should also curb their activities. The banned groups are freely operating in the country under new names.”
The attack is the biggest on a Sufi shrine in Pakistan since militants began bombing in 2001.
No group has claimed responsibility, but it appears to continue a growing trend among militants to target members of other sects.
Talat Masood, a retired army general who now works as a military analyst, said the bombing had dual motives.
“Firstly, it’s a part of the overall aim of destabilising the government and undermining law and order,” he said.
“But at the same time I think this is directed at followers of certain sects by groups that tend to take a very puritanical view of Islam.” Taliban militants have little respect for Sufism’s mystical strand of Islam, with shrines and saints.
Analysts suspect responsibility may lie with the so-called Punjabi Taliban – armed groups set up by Pakistan to fight India in Kashmir. They have since turned their fire on the government in the capital, Islamabad, and joined forces with the Taliban in their north-western, mountainous hideouts along the border with Afghanistan.
Yesterday, police and security officers continued patrolling busy intersections in Lahore. Security was particularly tight around mosques for Friday prayers amid fears of further attacks.
Although there were no suicide attacks during June, Pakistan was already bracing itself for a fresh wave of terror.
The blasts followed warnings by officials in Lahore and Peshawar that attacks were imminent.