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Carnage as Pakistan hospital bomb blast kills 10

16 April 2010 22:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. A suicide bomber blew himself up in the main hospital in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing 10 people and triggering chaos and panic on the wards, APA reports quoting AFP.
Police said it appeared to be a sectarian attack linked to the nearby shooting of a Shiite banker whose body had been brought to the hospital shortly before the bomb blast.
Quetta, capital of insurgency-hit southwestern Baluchistan province, has seen frequent violence pitting militants from the majority Sunni and minority Shiite communities.
City police chief Ghulam Shabbir Sheikh put the death toll at 10, including four policemen and a cameraman with a private television station. More than 30 people were wounded, including at least four journalists and a local MP.
"It appears to be sectarian violence," provincial police chief Qazi Abdul Wahid told AFP.
The victim of the shooting was Arshad Zaidi, the son of a local Shiite community leader, who was sprayed with bullets by gunmen on a motorbike as he left the bank.
"Hundreds of people including a local MP and dozens of journalists rushed to the hospital where the body was lying. As the crowd swelled at the casualty ward a suicide bomber blew himself up," crime investigation department chief Wazir Khan Nasir told AFP.
The blast spread panic through the hospital and send shards of glass flying, while witnesses said the walls of the casualty ward were spattered with blood stains and pieces of human flesh.
"We have found legs and head from the blast site. We have also found metal pellets, usually stuffed in suicide vests, from the blast site," police officer Mohammad Iqbal said.
Nasir said the bomber had used between five and eight kilograms (11 to 18 pounds) of explosives.
"We shifted patients including pregnant women from emergency and gynaecology wards to other sections," rescue worker Mohammad Kamil told AFP.
The attack occurred after a UN report said Pakistani authorities could have prevented the 2007 murder of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto and deliberately failed to properly investigate her death, but there were no apparent links.
Violence including targeted killings blamed on insurgents, sectarian groups and Taliban militants have spiked in Baluchistan which borders both Afghanistan and Iran. About two dozen people died in targeted killings in March.
Baluchistan is rife with Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between majority Sunnis and minority Shiite Muslims and regional insurgency.
Baluch rebels rose up in 2004 demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s wealth of natural resources, including oil and gas. Hundreds of people have died since then.
Shiites account for about 20 percent of Sunni-dominated Pakistan’s population of 160 million. More than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the late 1980s.
In other violence on Friday, missiles fired from US drones targeted a car and a compound in Pakistan’s lawless tribal area on the Afghan border, killing at least four militants, security officials said.
US forces have been waging a covert drone war against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in the nuclear-armed country’s northwestern tribal belt, where militants have carved out havens in mountainous areas outside direct government control.
More than 870 people have been killed in more than 90 US strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, with a surge in the past year as President Barack Obama has put Pakistan at the heart of his fight against Al-Qaeda.