Pakistan blast toll climbs to 44
'Blood and body parts everywhere'
LAHORE, Pakistan -- At least 44 people have been killed and dozens injured after a bomb exploded at a religious shrine in Gandhawa, 220 miles east of Quetta, police sources told CNN.
The blast on Saturday was the fifth over a 12-hour period in Baluchistan province, located in southwestern Pakistan, intelligence and police sources said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Sunday issued a strong condemnation, urging "those responsible to be brought to justice." He also called for "calm and restraint in the face of this brazen and cowardly act."
The first in a string of explosions was Saturday afternoon; the last one Saturday night.
-- Four persons were injured in two separate blasts, which rocked the city of Turbat, city in southwestern Pakistan.
-- Several persons were injured in a blast in Naseerabad.
-- There was another blast at Samangli road in Quetta, but no casualties have been reported as yet.
The Gandhawa blast came as Shiite Muslims congregated at a shrine, The Associated Press reported.
Thousands of worshippers were at the shrine of a Shiite saint near the town of Naseerabad, about 210 miles south of Quetta, when the bomb went off outside, Mubarak Ali, a local police official told AP.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility and no indication the attack was linked to clashes between renegade tribesmen and government forces at another town in southwestern Baluchistan that left at least 30 people dead last week.
"It was a powerful bomb. There was blood and body parts everywhere," Mehrab Khan, another police official told AP.
"Right now people are angry. They are wailing and crying. Some of them have blocked roads in the town and we are trying to control the situation."
Khan said the dead and injured, some in critical condition, were transported to a nearby hospital and he expected the death toll to rise.
Pakistan has a history of sectarian violence, mostly blamed on rival majority Sunni and minority Shiite extremist groups. About 80 percent of Pakistan's 150 million people are Sunnis and 17 percent are Shiites.
Most of the Muslims live together peacefully, but small groups of militants on both sides stage attacks.
In one area of Baluchistan, thousands of people fearing the collapse of a shaky cease-fire escaped a remote town where fighting last week between Pakistani troops and renegade tribesmen left at least 30 people dead, officials told AP.
Thursday's fighting in Dera Bugti, which lies about 30 miles from Pakistan's main gas fields, was an alarming escalation of a low-level tribal rebellion in Baluchistan, the country's poorest province.
A parliamentary committee has been set up to examine the grievances of the tribesmen in the province, which was roiled by insurgency in the 1970s. Tribesmen are demanding more returns from the natural gas extracted from their territory and resent the army's moves to set up garrisons in the region.
As government workers and their families fled the area in vehicles under paramilitary escort, ethnic nationalists accused the army of preparing a major offensive and warned they could turn the province into a "graveyard" for soldiers.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao told reporters in the capital, Islamabad, that fighters loyal to the local tribal leader were digging in around Dera Bugti and destroying roads. He described these as "serious developments," but maintained the government wanted to resolve the situation through talks.
The two sides agreed to a cease-fire early Friday after 16 hours of clashes. But on Saturday all 3,300 government employees and their families -- who are not from the local Bugti tribe -- evacuated the town, which has a population of about 84,000 and is 185 miles southeast of Quetta.
Abdul Samad Lasi, the top government official in Dera Bugti, told AP that at least 1,500 armed Bugti men have taken up positions in mountains outside the town and were waiting for an order to attack. He cited intelligence and security reports.
In Quetta, the provincial capital, about 3,000 supporters from ethnic Baluch nationalist parties staged a protest Saturday, accusing the government of "ruthless firing" against tribesmen and concealing the deaths of civilians. They carried black flags and wore black arm bands.
--CNN Producer Syed Mohsin Naqvi contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
