Bomb explodes at Pakistan rally, 30 killed
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-07 09:51

At least 30 people were killed and as many wounded when a bomb, possibly in a car, exploded at a rally for an assassinated religious leader in central Pakistan early on Thursday, police and ambulance workers said.

The rally on the first anniversary of the shooting of extremist Sunni religious leader Azam Tariq was dispersing at 4.40 a.m. (7:40 p.m. EDT Wednesday) in the city of Multan when the powerful bomb exploded, police said.

"A bomb exploded in a rally in which 30 people have been killed and almost the same number have been wounded," Abdul Rauf, an official for Edhi ambulance service, told Reuters.

Private television station Geo said a bomb exploded in a car just outside the grounds where the rally was being held in the Rasheedabad area of Multan, some 425 km (250 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad.

Police said they had no immediate confirmation of such a report.

Geo television said at least two blasts were heard in the span of about one minute.

Hundreds of people had been attending the rally and were dispersing when the explosion took place, Geo television said.

Sunni Muslim militant leader and member of parliament Azam Tariq was among five people killed in an attack on his car on Oct. 6 last year on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Tariq's militant Sunni group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) (Soldiers of Mohammad's Companions) group was one of seven Islamic militant groups outlawed by President Pervez Musharraf -- five of them in a crackdown on religious violence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

Pakistan has been racked by sectarian violence in recent years, the most recent when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a mosque of the minority Shi'ite Muslim sect in the eastern city of Sialkot on Oct. 2, killing 30 people.

Tariq's SSP has been accused of involvement in a wave of violence between Pakistan's dominant Sunni Muslims and Shi'ites, who account for about 15 percent of the 150 million population.

Like other such organizations, Sipah-e-Sahaba now officially works under a new name.

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