A suicide bomber was killed, and another injured after security forces foiled an attempt to strike an Eid al-Adha congregation in southern Pakistan.
The attack took place in Shikarpur in Sindh Province, where 60 were killed in a suicide attack on another Shi’ite mosque in 2015. Two bombers, according to police, tried to enter a Shia mosque where over 500 people had gathered for Eid prayers in the Shikarpur district in the Sindh province, 500 kilometers north of Karachi. One bomber was killed and the other injured and taken into custody.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but similar attacks in the past have been claimed by extremist groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The extremist Sunni groups consider Shi’ites as heretics and have frequently targeted them in recent years. According to a spokesperson for the policethree officers were critically injured in the botched attack.
Pakistan, a Sunni-majority country, has a long history of sectarian violence as thousands of Shias and Sunnis have been killed in suicide bombings, blasts, and assassinations in the last three decades. Shias make up 10 percent of the total population of 180 million.
