Pakistan - Karachi bomb aftermath

Karachi in mourning after 43 bomb deaths

Article published on the 2009-12-29 Latest update 2009-12-29 14:45 TU

Shopkeepers survey destroyed shops, a day after they were set ablaze by an angry mob in reaction to the attack in Karachi
(Photo: Reuters)

Pakistan's commercial capital, Karachi, is closed down Tuesday after the government announced a day of mourning for the 43 people killed in Monday's suicide-bomb attack on a Shia-Muslim procession.

"The death toll has risen to 43 - 41 bodies were shifted to the Civil Hospital and two others to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre," police surgeon Jagdish Kumar told the AFP news agency.

Three women and three children were among the dead, Kumar said. The number of wounded now stands at 60.

Schools, shops and offices are shut on Tuesday and  there is little traffic on Karachi's roads.

Firefighters struggled through the night to put out a fire at a market which was set ablaze by rioters reacting to the attack.

Investigators retrieved the head and torso of the bomber and blamed the Taliban, who are under attack in areas near the Afghan border, and another Islamist armed group, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.

The bomber ingited explosives strapped to his body as crowds paraded down the city's Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road.

"People are braced across the country for further attacks," said Pakistan correspondent Omar Waraitch. "Particularly in Karachi, there is a tense situation as long-simmering ethnic differences between the Urdu-speaking population and the vast Pashtun population," he said.

Waraitch added that in the past the Pashtun population have been accused of sheltering the Taliban.