More Shi'ite gets blown up

Rico says it's not polite to mock others' religious beliefs, but sometimes it's too hard to pass up... The New York Times has an article by Richard Oppel and Salman Masood about intra-Muslim violence in Pakistan:

The death toll from a suicide bomber’s attack on a Shiite religious procession in Karachi was reported to have risen to 40 on Tuesday, as the city reeled from rioting overnight amid fears that extremist groups already waging a multifront war against the government were now trying to foment sectarian violence against the country’s minority Shiite Muslims.
The GEO television network, citing hospital sources, said at least forty people had been killed and more than one hundred had been injured in the attack, which struck the procession as it made its way along Muhammad Ali Jinnah Road on Monday afternoon.
The attack, the third against Shi'ites in three days, appeared to deeply unsettle the Pakistani government, which ordered the director general of the Rangers, a paramilitary force under the control of the Interior Ministry, to take control of Karachi.
The interior minister, Rehman Malik, also asked Shi'ite clerics to postpone religious processions , especially in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, to avoid “providing soft targets to militants,” according to the state-run news agency. Government leaders urged people not to take the law into their own hands. Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, warned that “a deliberate attempt seems to be afoot by the extremists to turn the fight against militants into a sectarian clash and make the people fight against one another.”
Police officials said that Sunni extremists, possibly with links to the Taliban, had been behind the attack. Sunni extremists believe Shi'ites are apostates and have in the past attacked the group, which makes up twenty percent of Pakistan’s population. Two people were arrested in connection with the bombings, though no group claimed responsibility. The bombing defied Pakistani security, which had deployed more forces in anticipation of an attack against Shi'ites during their annual observance of Ashura, which commemorates the death of the revered Shi'ite martyr Imam Hussein.
Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub and main port of entry for goods shipped through the country to the United States military in Afghanistan, had largely been spared the violence that has swept the country since October, when Pakistani forces began an offensive against Taliban militants in the South Waziristan tribal area.
In retaliation for that offensive, Taliban commanders have overseen a wave of attacks against large and interior cities, including the northwestern frontier hub of Peshawar, the military garrison city of Rawalpindi, and the Punjabi heartland. Monday’s blast, which occurred just after 4 p.m., sent a huge plume of smoke over the Shi'ite procession as it wound down one of the main thoroughfares of the city. A security camera caught the explosion, which left people shrieking and running for cover. Dr. Sagheer Ahmed, the health minister of Sindh Province, where Karachi is located, said soon after the attack that 63 people had been wounded, some critically.
The crowd quickly turned its anger on nearby police officers, apparently blaming them for not doing enough to protect them. Dozens of shops and cars were set ablaze as evening descended. Riots also broke out in Hyderabad, the second-largest city in Sindh.
On Monday evening, the police released a picture of what they said they believed was the severed head of the bomber, who appeared to be in his late teens. But later on the authorities asked that the picture not be publicized, suggesting that they had doubts that the remains belonged to the bomber. But they did not retract their belief that the culprit was a suicide attacker, noting that a hidden bomb would have left a large crater.
Security analysts said the attack would appeal to a wide range of militants by further destabilizing Pakistan’s weak government. “The Taliban and the jihadi elements are very much opposed to Shi'ites, and this suits their double purpose of destabilizing the state while creating despondency amongst the people, and especially the Shi'ite,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and military analyst. He said it was likely that a militant Sunni group with a history of sectarian attacks was behind the blast. Mr. Masood pointed to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group with links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Monday’s blast came after two other attacks on Shiites over the weekend. On Saturday, a small hidden bomb wounded more than a dozen people in Karachi. On Sunday, a suicide bomber in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in the north, killed at least ten people and wounded more than 80 during a Shiite procession. The bomber had tried to enter a prayer hall, but blew himself up when guards blocked him.