Shiites blame Pakistan security forces after bombing kills 81

Most of the dead and wounded are Hazaras, an ethnic group that migrated from Afghanistan over a century ago.

Residents of Quetta, Pakistan, were recovering on Sunday, a day after a bomb ripped through a Shiite neighbourhood killing 81 people and damaging dozens of buildings. Arshad Butt / AP Photo

QUETTA // Angry residents today demanded government protection from an onslaught of attacks against Shiites, a day after 81 people were killed in a massive bombing that a local official said was a sign that security agencies were too scared to do their jobs.

Saturday's blast at a produce market in Quetta also wounded 160 people and underlined the precarious situation for Shiites living in a majority Sunni country where many extremist groups don't consider them real Muslims.

Most of the dead and wounded were Hazaras, an ethnic group that migrated from Afghanistan over a century ago. Shiites, including Hazaras, have often been targeted by Sunni extremists in the province of Baluchistan where Quetta is the capital, the southern city of Karachi and north-western Pakistan.

At the blast site, members of the Hazara community helped authorities dig through rubble to find the dead or survivors. Most of their efforts were focused on a two-story building that was completely destroyed. More than 20 shops nearby were also demolished.

Clothing and shoes were scattered through the concrete rubble, broken steel bars and shattered wooden window frames littering the streets.

One of those helping, Qurban Ali, 40, was instructing young people to be patient and careful while removing the rubble, lest they hurt themselves or survivors still buried in the debris. His cousin Abbas was still missing after the blast.

Like many Hazaras, he lashed out at the people who perpetrated the violence.

"Who are these people who made us Hazara so grim and sad? Why are they after us?" he said. "Not one month or week passes here without the killing of a member of the Hazara community ... Why is the government - both central and provincial - so lethargic in protecting Shiites?"

Near the rubble, a group of more than 50 women were wailing and beating their heads in mourning.

On the road to the neighbourhood where the attack occurred, Hazara youth burnt tires and chanted for the arrests of the killers. A number of Shiite groups also staged a sit-in and were demanding the immediate removal of the chief secretary of Baluchistan and the top police official, said Rahim Jaffery, who heads a Shiite organisation called the Council for the Protection of Mourning.

"We are demanding the city [protection] be handed over to the army so that the killing of Hazara Shiites can be stopped," he said.

Mr Jaffery said Shiite groups were meeting to decide whether to stage a protest similar to one in January when they refused to bury their dead for four days.

That protest led the prime minister to sack the chief minister of the province and his cabinet and put Zulfiqar Magsi directly in charge of the region - a move that many Shiites thought would help protect their community. But the governor's comments revealed his frustration at a job growing ever more difficult.

Mr Magsi said the blast was the result of a failure of the security and intelligence agencies in the province.

"Officials and personnel of these institutions are scared. Therefore they don't take action against" militants, he said.

A militant group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi called one local television station to claim responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan's intelligence agencies helped nurture Sunni militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in the 1980s and 1990s to counter a perceived threat from Iran, which is mostly Shiite. Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 2001, but the group continues to operate fairly freely.

Last year was particularly deadly for Shiites in Pakistan. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 were killed in targeted attacks across the country. The human rights group said more than 125 were killed in Baluchistan province, most of whom belonged to the Hazara community.