Pakistani authorities slapped a curfew on a restive northwestern district yesterday after clashes and gunfights left at least seven people dead at a religious procession, officials said.
Sectarian violence erupted on Saturday in the town of Paharpur in Dera Ismail Khan district, as hundreds of Muslims rallied to celebrate Id Milad-un-Nabi, which marks the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday.
Gunmen opened fire on a parade by the Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims, killing one person on the spot and prompting the angry crowd to retaliate by attacking a seminary of the local Deobandi Sunni sect.
PHOTO: AFP
“Seven people were killed and 38 others have been injured in these incidents. All the dead are Sunni; there are some Shiites among the injured,” district police chief Gul Afzal Afridi told reporters.
Dera Ismail Khan district has in the past been troubled by unrest between followers of the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam, but clashes between Sunni factions are relatively rare.
An official at Dera Ismail Khan hospital confirmed the death toll and said that the 38 people wounded were still being treated.
Authorities early yesterday ordered people to remain in their houses night and day in the main city, also called Dera Ismail Khan, and other parts of the district including Paharpur town.
Security forces were patrolling the streets.
“We have arrested more than 20 suspects and are carrying out more raids. There is a curfew in the main city and some of the outskirts,” Afridi said.
Afridi had refused to comment on Saturday on who might be responsible for the initial shooting, saying the area was troubled by both sectarian unrest and attacks by Islamist militant groups.
Shiites account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s Sunni-dominated population.
The two communities usually coexist peacefully, but more than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence since the late 1980s.
Attacks by Islamist extremists, meanwhile, have killed more than 3,000 people since July 2007. Most attacks are blamed on the Pakistani Taliban.
In related news, a moderate earthquake deep in the Hindu Kush mountain range jolted parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan early yesterday, but there were no reports of injuries or damage, officials said.
A Pakistani official described a “high-intensity” quake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale, while the US Geological Survey — which monitors earthquakes around the world — reported a 5.7-magnitude quake in the area.
The epicenter was on the Afghan side of the Hindu Kush mountain range, and Pakistan’s chief meteorologist Riaz Khan said that the remote location of the earthquake saved both countries from major damage.
Tremors were felt at 4:21am in northwestern Pakistan, with frightened residents of regional capital Peshawar waking up and spilling onto the streets as the ground shook beneath them, a reporter said.
“It was a high intensity major earthquake which lasted for several seconds. The fault line was in an unpopulated area and fortunately we have no reports of any type of damage,” Khan said.
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck 175km northeast of Kabul. The epicenter was about 144km west of Pakistan’s Chitral district, Khan said.
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