Rioting Shiites burn Pakistani police station

SIALKOT, Pakistan – Thousands of minority Shiite Muslims rampaged through this eastern Pakistan city for the second straight day Saturday, burning a police station and the mayor’s office after a mass funeral for 31 people killed by a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque.

Investigators questioned survivors of Friday’s blast and sifted through the carnage at the Zainabia mosque in Sialkot for clues, but said it’s not yet clear whether al Qaeda had a hand in the attack.

Hundreds of army troops and police commandos patrolled the streets, but initially struggled to contain rioting by youths that broke out after about 15,000 Shiite Muslim mourners, beating their chests and wailing, had gathered for a mass funeral for victims of the bombing.

The rioters attacked the office of Mayor Mian Javed, but he was not inside at the time. They also burned a record room of a court, a police station and several motorcycles parked there.

Youths shouted slogans against the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the United States and the perpetrators of the attack. By late afternoon, security forces had brought the situation under control.

The Pakistani government offered a reward of $175,000 for information leading to the identity of Friday’s suicide bomber, as police investigators searched for clues at the mosque and questioned witnesses.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Police and other security agencies are still investigating, and at this stage I cannot say whether al Qaeda was involved in this act of terrorism,” provincial law minister Raja Basharat Elahi told the Associated Press.

Police quoted witnesses as saying the attacker strode into the mosque carrying the bomb in a briefcase and the moment he opened it, it exploded, killing 16 people on the spot. Fifteen others died later.

Elahi said 29 of the bodies had been identified, and that one or two of the unclaimed bodies could have been suicide bombers.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao was quoted by the state news agency as saying the attack may have been a reaction to the death of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a top Pakistani al Qaeda operative and radical Sunni Muslim militant group leader who was killed by Pakistani security forces in a gunbattle a week ago.