A suspected suicide bomber targeting Sunni Muslims today killed at least 47 people in Pakistan's city of Karachi and wounded dozens at a prayer meeting marking the anniversary of Prophet Mohammad's birth, police said.
"The blast shook the earth. It was like hell," Mohammad Ehtesham, a 70-year-old worshipper in the park where the blast took place, said.
"We were about to finish our prayers when blast went off ... It was so strong," said Ali Nasir, a young man among the wounded.
Soon after, angry youths, some of them armed, went on a rampage, setting a petrol station and cars ablaze and firing on police and paramilitary troops as they tried to reach Nishtar Park, in the heart of the city's commercial district and close to the mausoleum of Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
"The initial evidence we have gathered from the site of blast suggested that it was a suicide attack because there was no crater found," Jehangir Mirza, Sindh province police chief said. The venue had been checked by security beforehand.
The blast was believed to have been centred close to the stage where prayer leaders from a Sunni organisation, Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, had been standing, and police confirmed several of them were killed.
Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat has a following of hundreds of thousands of people, raising fears of more violence in the city.
Television pictures showed dead bodies lying on the ground and wounded being taken to hospitals in vans after the explosion.
"It was a sad incident in which 47 innocent people were killed," Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told state-run television.
Police and provincial health officials said scores of people were wounded, including journalists and photographers covering the prayer meeting, and hospital authorities called for blood donors to cope with the emergency.
Youths, many wearing green head bands, roamed streets in neighbourhoods well away from the bomb site, pelting stones, burning tyres and forcing shopkeepers to lower their shutters.