Bombers Strike Busy Pakistan Markets, Killing Dozens

Bombers Strike Busy Pakistan Markets, Killing Dozens
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323610704578630102759533318.html
Attacks Target Shiite City at Busy Ramadan Shopping Hour
Updated July 27, 2013, 2:18 a.m. ET

By SAEED SHAH

ISLAMABAD—Two suicide bombers targeted crowded food markets in a city in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 57 people, in attacks that appeared aimed at the minority Shiite community, officials said.

Assailants wearing suicide vests hit two different markets in Parachinar, said Riaz Mahsud, the senior local administration official. The attacks occurred as locals shopped hurriedly for supplies to break their daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Hospital official Shabir Hussain and Shiite leader Hamid Ali said Saturday, according to the Associated Press, that another 167 were wounded in the bombings.

Ramadan is turning out to be a period of bloodshed in Pakistan. Earlier in the week, militants attacked a local office of Pakistan's top spy agency, killing at least three intelligence agents in the southern town of Sukkur.

Parachinar, near the Afghan border, is regularly a target of extremist violence. It is an almost exclusively Shiite town, surrounded by Taliban extremists and tribes hostile to the Shiites. The Pakistani Taliban and allied groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, from the majority Sunni strain of Islam, regard Shiites as heretics.

Televised images of the scene showed burned-out vehicles and pools of blood in the street, along with the scattered shoes, hats and other discarded possessions of the victims.

The explosions, which occurred at around 6 p.m. local time, appeared timed for the busiest shopping period of the day, just before sunset and the end of the daily Ramadan fast.

Extremist violence in Pakistan has turned increasingly anti-Shiite over the last two years. Unlike sectarian conflict elsewhere in the Muslim world, it is largely a one-way slaughter of Shiites, who haven't retaliated.

The Pakistani Taliban and sectarian groups work closely together, exploiting mutual networks of militants, safe houses and radical mosques.

Last year, Pakistan saw a total of 202 sectarian attacks that killed 537 people and injured a further 772, according to a report by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, an independent think tank based in Islamabad.

In total, 2,050 people were killed by extremists in the country in 2012, the report said.

Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared July 27, 2013, on page A6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Ramadan Shoppers Are Killed In Pakistan.