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News > Pakistan

Deadly Blast Hits Sufi Shrine in Pakistan, 9 Killed

  • Ambulances are parked outside a cordoned off area as rescue workers and a bomb disposal team survey the site after a blast in Lahore

    Ambulances are parked outside a cordoned off area as rescue workers and a bomb disposal team survey the site after a blast in Lahore | Photo: Reuters

Published 8 May 2019
Opinion

"Police was the prime target in this attack. We are collecting forensic evidences to ascertain the nature of the blast," said Ashfaq Khan, deputy inspector general of police operations in Lahore, adding that nine people were killed and 24 wounded.

A powerful blast targeted the Pakistani police forces outside a famous Sufi shrine inside the city of Lahore on Wednesday, the GEO News Service reported.

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According to the report, at least nine people were killed and two dozen more were wounded as a result of the bombing.

The blast, a day after the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, went off at a police checkpoint near the Data Darbar, one of the largest Muslim shrines in South Asia.

"Police was the prime target in this attack. We are collecting forensic evidences to ascertain the nature of the blast," said Ashfaq Khan, deputy inspector general of police operations in Lahore, adding that nine people were killed and 24 wounded.

Muhammad Farooq, a spokesman for the city's rescue services, said at least seven of the wounded were in critical condition.

Since the attack, Pakistani police have setup checkpoints around the main roads leading to the shrine. The Pakistani police said that they have placed local hospitals on alert.

The attack was claimed by the Hizbul Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, who said they were targeting the police.

"This attack was carried out at a time when there were no civilians near the police," a spokesman for the militant group, Abdul Aziz Yousafzai, said in a statement.

The Pakistani Taliban have been fighting the government for years.

Sufis, who follow a mystical form of Islam that has been practiced in South Asia for centuries, have been regularly attacked by hardline Sunni Muslim militants in the past.

In 2010, two suicide bombers struck the Data Darbar shrine killing 42 people and wounding 175, in an attack officials said was carried out by the Pakistani Taliban.

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