Pakistan Bomb Kills 12

Twelve women and children have been killed by a bomb blast during a gathering of thousands of Muslims at a mosque in Pakistan.

A further 23 people were injured by the device, which exploded at a mosque in the town of Bhakkar in the eastern Punjab region of the country, 300 miles south-west of the capital, Islamabad.

No group has claimed responsibility but authorities suspect that the bomb was part of a continuing feud between militants from the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam.

Witnesses said nine women and three children, all Shia Muslims, were killed by the explosion, thought to have been caused by a timed device planted in the grounds of the mosque.

The blast went off close to midnight on Thursday in the women's section of a huge segregated gathering of Shias in grounds at the mosque and adjacent cemetery. Thousands of Shias were at the mosque for an annual gathering to mourn the death of Hussain, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad.

Mohammed Nisar, a doctor at the hospital in Bhakkar where the dead and wounded were taken, said the bomb was apparently planted near the section of the mosque where women pray. Mosques are segregated, with women-only sections. Mr Nisar said: "The bomb was planted on the women's side and all the dead were women." The hospital does not expect to treat any more casualties and preparations have already been made for the burial of the dead.

A local Shia leader, Wizarat Naqvi, said: "It is religious terrorism. You know what is going on in Pakistan."

Violence between militants from the Sunni and Shia sects has killed hundreds of people in Pakistan during the last decade. Shias make up about 15% of Pakistan's 140 million people. Tension between the two communities arose after the 1979 Islamic revolution in neighbouring Iran. Members of the two branches of Islam eat, work and socialise together, but intermarriage is rare.

Pakistan's military president, General Pervez Musharraf, in January vowed to clamp down on sectarian extremism as part of a broader crackdown on Islamic militants. Hundreds of activists from radical Sunni and Shia groups were detained but most have since been freed for lack of evidence.

The usual culprits involved in the killing of Shia Muslims have been members of the violent Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet group, banned by President Musharraf. The organisation reviles Shia Muslims as outside the pale of Islam.

Since January, dozens of Shias have been killed in Pakistan. Many of the deaths have been targeted killings and have occurred both in the Punjab province and in the country's southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.

Hasan Turabi, the head of Tehrik-e-Jafria, an outlawed Shia group, has blamed the upsurge in killings of Shia Muslims on the return to Pakistan of militant Sunni Muslims from neighbouring Afghanistan following the collapse of the hardline Taliban regime in that country.

Mr Turabi said the Taliban, a movement dominated by Sunnis, espoused the same philosophy as Pakistan's radical Sunni Muslims, and harboured those who had killed Shia Muslims in Pakistan. With the fall of the Taliban these radical elements returned home, he said.