There is no evidence of a link between that attack, in the southwestern city of Quetta, and bombings less than two hours earlier in Iraq (news - web sites) that also targeted Shiites at religious rites, they say. But authorities here say their inquiry is just beginning into Tuesday's assault in Quetta that killed 43, including two attackers, and wounded over 160.
A third attacker who survived remains unconscious with head injuries, Shoaib Suddle, the Baluchistan province chief of police, said Thursday. The suspect is under guard at a government hospital in Quetta.
"There is no indication so far of any link between the two attacks," Tasneem Noorani, the top bureaucrat at the Interior Ministry, told The Associated Press.
Quetta remained under a curfew Thursday to prevent further sectarian violence, with soldiers in armored personnel carriers patrolling the streets. After Tuesday's attack, enraged Shiites targeted a Sunni mosque and shops in retaliatory rioting.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators were looking into whether the Pakistan and Iraq attacks were coordinated — but had no evidence of that yet. Estimates of the toll from the bombings in Iraq on Tuesday ranged from 117 to 271.
A hallmark of al-Qaida is to launch multiple attacks at the same time. The sectarian bombings in Pakistan also appeared in line with the ambitions of an al-Qaida-linked Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has said he aims to spark a Shiite-Sunni civil war in Iraq.
Suspicion in the Quetta attack fell on one of Pakistan's main Sunni militant groups, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, according to the deputy chief of police in Baluchistan province, Arif Akram.
"Most probably, they are members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," Akram told AP.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is closely linked to Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s former rulers, the Taliban militia, and is believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida terrorist network. It has been implicated in the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and numerous church and bus bombings.
A government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said "medium intensity explosives" were used in Tuesday's attack, though it was not immediately clear what kind.
Three suspects hurled grenades and fired shots into the religious procession, and then detonated grenades and explosives strapped to their bodies.
The bloodshed came on Ashoura, a day when Islam's Shiite faithful mark the death of a revered 7th-century leader by marching in black and lashing themselves in penitence.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who escaped two assassination attempts in December, vowed to arrest those behind the attack and said Pakistan would be rid of terrorism.
"There's no doubt in my mind there's an evil mind behind these attacks," Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said. "We shall repulse all these dark designs against the state and people of Pakistan."
People gathered for a mass funeral Wednesday, but Shiite leaders delayed the ceremonies, saying they would not take the bodies to the cemetery until the provincial police chief, the head of the anti-terrorism force and the city mayor are fired for security lapses. It is normally imperative in Muslim culture to bury the dead quickly.
Though most of Pakistan's Sunnis and Shiites live peacefully together, small radical groups on both sides are responsible for frequent attacks. All but 3 percent of Pakistan's people are Muslim, and Sunnis outnumber Shiites 4-to-1.
