Pakistan buries Lahore victims

Islamabad, July 2 (IANS/EFE) Pakistan Friday buried the scores of victims of the multiple attack on a Sufi shrine in the city of Lahore, which is turning into the epicentre of terrorist violence.

Many of the bodies of the 44 worshippers, who died in the suicide attack, were buried in different parts of the Punjab province after having been identified by their respective families, witnesses and police sources told EFE.

According to the police, 152 to 175 persons are still recovering from their injuries at their homes and in hospitals, including 28 who are in critical condition.

The terror attack occurred Thursday night in the religious complex of Data Ganj Baksh shrine in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.

Thousands of people were in the interior of the shrine, when three explosions occurred within an interval of a few minutes, two of them carried out by suicide terrorists in their twenties and the third allegedly a cracker explosion of low intensity, according to security sources.

Thursday’s attack is the latest in the chain of sectarian acts whose main object has been the city of Lahore, where the last main attack also took place towards the end of May against the minority Ahmadi sect.

“This attack is clearly of a sectarian nature, it is part of the recent tendency. Radical Sunnis are totally against those who do not follow their orthodox interpretation of Islam,” a security official told EFE.

–IANS/EFE