Thousands mourn Karachi bomb blast victims

AFP - Thousands of people Saturday attended the funeral of 14 people killed in Friday's double bombing in Karachi, as the death toll from the assaults rose overnight to 33, police said.

"According to our preliminary investigation, both the explosions were triggered by remote control," a senior police official Mazhar Mishwani told AFP, contrary to an earlier claim that both were suicide attacks.

He said that both bombs were planted on motorcycles.

Two other police officials, Aurangzeb Khattak and Mukhtiar Khaskheli, also confirmed that remote-controlled devices planted on both motorcyles caused the two explosions.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the twin bombings rose to 33 with at least 170 others were being treated at various hospitals, a minister said.

"Six people died overnight while two more succumbed to injuries this morning, raising the death toll to 33," provincial health minister Saghir Ahmad said in a statement.

At a funeral Saturday for some of those killed, thousands of mourners beat their chests and cried loudly as the bodies of the 14 victims were brought to a Karachi sports field.

Pakistani TV channels broadcast live footage from the venue, showing men and women clad in black and carrying black flags, beating their chests and chanting religious slogans.

"More than 10,000 people attended the funeral of the 14 deceased," said Javed Mehr, a local police official on duty at the ground.

Mehr told AFP that "the entire area was sealed off by police and paramilitary rangers to avoid any untoward incident."

Women and children were among 12 people killed Friday, when a device planted on a motorcyle went off near a bus carrying Shiites to a religious procession marking the last day of the Shiites' holy month of Muharram.

A second blast, which was also triggered by remote control, killed 13 people, damaged ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital, where victims of the first attack were being treated and anxious relatives were gathering.

Provincial home affairs minister Zulfiqar Mirza told reporters in Karachi Saturday that the religious procession "was the main target of terrorists but they could not make it because of very strict security measures."

He said some arrests had been made but declined to give further details.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi "condemned the Karachi bombings and said terrorism will never be allowed to succeed in its nefarious designs," according to a foreign ministry statement.

The statement quoted Qureshi as saying that "such acts only strengthen our resolve to fight terrorism."

Karachi's roads were mostly deserted Saturday while shops, business centres and educational institutions were closed as the port city mourned those killed in the two bombings.

Police and paramilitary rangers patrolled streets and sensitive areas and Mehr said security had been stepped up at all hospitals.

At another funeral in Karachi Saturday, hundreds of people mourned seven workers of the Mutahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) who were killed in the wave of political violence that has swept the city in recent weeks.

The MQM is the main coalition partner of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.

At least 37 activists from rival parties in the local government were killed over the past five days, following 48 similar killings last month.

The attacks in a city largely isolated from Islamist violence highlighted the instability in Pakistan, which is on the frontline of the US war on Al-Qaeda and where militants have killed more than 3,000 people since 2007.

On December 28, 43 people were killed in a bomb attack that turned a religious procession marking Ashura, the first day of Muharram, into a bloodbath.

Sectarian violence periodically flares between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, with the latter accounting for about 20 percent of Pakistan's 167 million people. Such violence has killed more than 4,000 people since the late 1980s.