Two suicide bombers on motorcycles struck a bus and hospital in Karachi on Friday, killing 25 people and targeting Shiite Muslims in Pakistan's financial capital for the second time in six weeks.
The attacks in a city largely isolated from Islamist attacks highlighted the terrorist threat in Pakistan, which is on the frontline of the U.S. war on al-Qaeda and where militants have killed more than 3,000 people since 2007.
Women and children were among 12 people killed when a bomber rammed a motorcycle bomb into a bus of Shiites on one of Karachi’s busiest roads, gutting the bus and sending glass flying, officials and witnesses said.
Twin bombings
Witnesses and officials said the bus was packed with Shiite Muslims heading to a mass religious procession to mark the last day of Muharram in Karachi, the southern port city of 16 million people on the Arabian sea.
A second bomber killed 13 people, damaging ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital where the bomb victims were being treated and anxious relatives were gathering.
"I heard a deafening explosion. I saw stretchers flying in the air. Two men fell just in front of me. I think they died," said Azam Ali, 26, who went to the hospital to inquire about a cousin wounded in the bus attack.
"Those killed and injured were mostly Shiites, they were relatives of those hurt in the first blast," he added.
"Three of my colleagues were injured and five ambulances were almost destroyed. We survived certain death. It’s a miracle that we’re alive," said Mohammed Mehboob, a volunteer with Pakistan charity EDHI.
After the first attack, nails from the bomb pierced the walls and doors of a bungalow on the side of the road. Blood stained the inside of the bus and shoes were lying nearby on the road, said an AFP reporter.
"We have a count of at least 25 people in the two blasts. In the first one, 12 people died and 50 were injured. In the second, 13 people were killed and 25 wounded," said Sagheer Ahmed, health minister for the southern Sindh province.
The attacks were carried out by suicide bombers on motorcycles, Munir Ahmad Sheikh, a bomb disposal official, told AFP.
Deadliest bombing since New Year
It was the deadliest bombing in Pakistan since 101 people were killed at a volleyball match in the northwest district of Lakki Marwat on New Year’s Day, and follows a recent decline in militant activity.
On Dec. 28, a bombing killed 43 people and reduced to a bloodbath a parade marking the holiest Shiite day of Ashura earlier in Muharram.
Pakistan’s feared Taliban network claimed responsibility for that attack, sparking riots that caused huge financial losses.
U.S. officials believe Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who oversaw a major increase in bomb attacks and plotted with al-Qaeda to kill five CIA agents in Afghanistan, was likely killed in a U.S. drone attack last month.
Sectarian violence periodically flares in Pakistan between Shiites, who beat and whip themselves in religious fervor during Ashura, and the country’s majority Sunnis, who oppose the public display of grief.
Shiites account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s mostly Sunni Muslim population of 167 million. More than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the late 1980s.
The country has seen a recent decline in militant attacks, attributed both to the success of a U.S. drone war and Pakistani offensives in the tribal belt by the Afghan border where Taliban and al-Qaeda networks are based.
Last month, 153 people were killed by militants in Pakistan — nearly half the 275 killed in October, according to an AFP tally.