A suicide attack on a packed Shia mosque in southwestern Pakistan during Friday prayers killed at least 44 people and wounded 65 others, the country’s leading private emergency service said.Describing what was the worst such attack in Pakistan in recent years, witnesses at the main Shia mosque in the centre of the city of Quetta reported seeing gunmen firing on worshippers before at least one suicide bomber blew himself up.‘‘According to our information, 44 people were killed and 65 wounded,’’ Ali Murad of the Edhi Welfare Foundation told Reuters.Shia cleric Sheikh Mehdi Najafi, who was leading prayers at the time of the attack, gave a toll of 40 dead and 52 injured. Earlier, officials put the toll at 32 dead but said it could rise.‘‘I saw bodies blown to pieces,’’ said worshipper Khan Ali, 60, who was slightly injured in the attack, which sparked angry protests among Shia Muslims in the city.Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said it was too early to say who was to blame. President Pervez Musharraf, in Paris on an official visit, vowed to punish the perpetrators.The attack will come as an embarrassment for Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led ‘‘war on terrorism’’, who tried during his visit to Europe and the United States to calm investors’ fears after a spate of attacks on Western and Christian targets in Pakistan last year blamed on Islamic militants.Witness accounts of the latest attack varied. Worshipper Mahmood Hussain said two bearded men fired on worshippers before a third person blew himself up. Another witness reported seeing two suicide bombers setting off explosives, while the information minister said there were three attackers, two of them suicide bombers who died instantly and a third later who died of his wounds.Hundreds of people have been killed in sectarian violence involving Sunni and Shia militants in recent years. Violence has worsened again this year after a relative lull in 2002.Angry crowds of Shias from the Hazara tribe, some armed and firing shots into the air, took to the streets and gathered outside the hospital where the bodies and casualties were taken. Vehicles, shops and a wing of the hospital were set ablaze and the Army was called in. Crowds began to disperse after paramilitary troops used loudspeakers to announce a curfew.Musharraf has arrested hundreds of Islamic militants since announcing support for the ‘‘war on terrorism’’ in 2001 but still failed to prevent such attacks. He vowed a ‘‘very strong’’ response. ‘‘It is unfortunate that some elements in Pakistan are undermining what Pakistan stands for. It is unfortunate that this small minority are able to derail or undermine national feelings,’’ he told reporters.Sajid Ali Naqvi, head of Islami Tehrik Pakistan, the main Shia political group and an opponent of Musharraf, called it a ‘‘terrorist incident’’ organised with the knowledge of state agencies. ‘‘If these incidents are not halted then terrorism will engulf the entire country,’’ he said.
