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Pakistan's Shiites Mourn Martyr
ISLAMABAD, April 5 (News Agencies) - Thousands of Shiite Muslims staged mourning processions Thursday to commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Imam Hussain, as Pakistan's military regime enforced tight security to prevent sectarian violence.
Troops were on alert in major cities and towns and police commandos perched on rooftops in sensitive districts while sniffer dogs scanned procession routes for explosives, officials and witnesses said.
Black-clad mourners paraded the streets reciting hymns to observe Ashura, the culmination of 10 days of Shiite rituals during Moharram, the first month of the Muslim year.
In the city of Rawalpindi, near the capital, thousands of Shiites chanted "Hussain, Hussain" and beat their chests with open palms in a procession escorted by riot police, witnesses said.
More than a dozen people were injured in scuffles between rival groups in the Punjabi town of Chakwal, police said.
In another incident near here a man fired into the crowd of mourners and injured two people before he was arrested, they said.
In southern Pakistan's Sindh province police dispersed a stone-pelting group and arrested some two-dozen people in Kotri city, Deputy Inspector General of police Asad Mirza said.
"Police used teargas to disperse them after they tried to disrupt a Shiite procession," he said.
Mourners flagellated their bare backs with iron chains fitted with knives as they marched behind black banners representing the battle flag of Hussain and the replicas of the Muslim saint's tomb.
Marchers, including women and children, reverently touched a decorated horse which symbolized the one ridden by Hussain.
Hussain was killed with his family and associates in a battle with Ummayed dynasty ruler Yazid in 680 AD at Kerbala, in modern day Iraq.
Ashura processions, also being held in centers including Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and others in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, were to end at Shiite mosques after sunset.
Stringent security was enforced for the processions this year after a spate of recent sectarian violence, pitting extremists from the majority Sunni and minority Shiite communities against each other, claimed more than 40 lives.
Both Sunni and Shiite Muslims revere Hussain, but the groups differ on some religious rites. The Sunnis are opposed to the public mourning by the Shiites, who form about 20% of Pakistan's 140-million population.
Some 200,000 police and paramilitary troops manned security across the country during the ritual, a home ministry spokesman told AFP.
Police recovered a bomb at a bus stand close to a Shiite mosque in the southern port city of Karachi late Wednesday, hours after a driver defused a timed device planted in his passenger bus.
In the central Punjab province, police arrested 11 people, including five armed men, who were heading towards a procession in a jeep, police officer Tariq Masood told AFP.
Two more suspected "armed terrorists" disguised as mourners were picked up from a procession in Multan, he said.
President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar and military ruler Generel Pervez Musharraf in messages for the occasion called for reconciliation in Pakistan.
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