Gunmen have launched simultaneous raids on two mosques of the minority Ahmadi Islamic sect in Lahore, killing more than 80 people, Pakistani police say. The attackers fired guns and threw grenades at worshippers during Friday prayers. Three militants later blew themselves up with suicide vests. Pakistani forces have secured both buildings, but are still searching for militants who fled the scene.
Lahore has been the scene of a string of brazen attacks. It is unclear who carried out the attacks, but suspicion has fallen on the Pakistani Taliban, Ali Dayan Hassan of Human Rights Watch told the BBC. Mr Hassan said the worshippers were "easy targets" for militant Sunni groups who consider the Ahmadis to be infidels. The attacks come as controversy rages in Pakistan over a competition on Facebook which invited people to draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Police say most of the worshippers who had been taken hostage inside the mosque in the heavily built-up Garhi Shahu area have managed to get out, the BBC's Aleem Maqbool reports from Islamabad. Pakistani forces are going room-to-room at the mosque and combing buildings in the area in the search for militants, our correspondent says. The police have warned that some of the militants managed to flee and could be at large with their suicide belts, he adds. Police took control of the other mosque in the nearby ModelTown area after a two-hour gunfight. Gunmen opened fire indiscriminately at the mosque, before security forces managed to kill one militant and capture two others, eyewitnesses told the BBC. They were said to be armed with AK-47 rifles, shotguns, grenades and possibly other explosive devices.
Police said some of the attackers took up position on top of the minarets, and fired assault rifles at police engaged in gunfights with militants below. Some of them blew themselves up afterwards inside the mosques. A dozen ambulances have taken the dead and injured to hospitals. The attacks come after at least 45 people were killed in March when two suicide bombers attacked a crowded residential area.
Sectarian attacks have been carried out by various militant groups in Punjab province, and across Pakistan in the past. While the Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and follow all Islamic rituals, they were declared non-Muslim in Pakistan in 1973, and in 1984 they were legally barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims.
Members of the community have often been mobbed, or gunned down in targeted attacks, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad. But this is the first time their places of worship have suffered daring and well co-ordinated attacks that bear the mark of Taliban militants, our correspondent adds. The London-based Ahmadi association issued a statement condemning the attacks. "The attacks are the culmination of years of unpoliced persecution of the [Ahmadis]... Today's attack is the most cruel and barbaric," the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK said in a statement. The Chief Minister of Pakistan's Punjab region, Shahbaz Sharif, also condemned the violence. "The entire nation of Pakistan feels heartfelt sorrow over the shootings in places of worship. No condemnation, however strong, will be enough for these incidents."
Source: BBC
Turkey silent on nuclear stockpile
As a month-long Nuclear Non-Proliferation summit in New York draws to a close, participants are still debating how best to achieve a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The problem at the heart of it all is Israel, a country with an undisclosed but known nuclear-weapons capability. Israel decided not to come to the US meeting, knowing it would face scrutiny and criticism.
Meanwhile, while it is still not clear whether Iran really wants or intends to militarise its fledgling nuclear industry, the potential has already increased tension throughout the Middle East and led to warnings of a new arms race there. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, has been among the most outspoken on the issue, saying many times that it is unreasonable to call just for restraints on Iran, while not dealing with the nuclear capability of Israel.
But the one issue that Erdogan never mentions is Turkey's own nuclear weapons stockpile. As a founding member of Nato, and a strategically-located state, Turkey is one of five Nato countries with nuclear weapons stationed on its soil. And as many domestic analysts are now observing, this evident contradiction is no longer helpful for Ankara's newly neighbourly and avowedly peaceful foreign policy.
