Blast in mosque kills one person in NW Pak

Police said a bomb blast killed one person and wounded several others in a mosque, in a region of northwest Pakistan plagued by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

Police said a bomb blast killed one person and wounded several others in a mosque on Saturday, in a region of northwest Pakistan plagued by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

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The bomber targeted a mosque in a Sunni neighbourhood of Hangu, a town in North West Frontier Province that has suffered several sectarian attacks before.

Hangu district borders the Kurram tribal region where around 200 people were killed in clashes between Sunnis and Shi'ites earlier this year.

On Friday a bomb killed ten people and wounded 40 at a funeral for a Shi'ite Muslim in Dera Ismail Khan. The funeral was for a man gunned down on Thursday. On the morning of the funeral gunmen killed a Shi'ite cleric.

Sectarian violence between militant groups has haunted Dera Ismail Khan, a district bordering the South Waziristan tribal region, where support runs deep for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Both the Taliban and al Qaeda are Sunni, and some of their cohorts, like Laskhar-e-Janghvi are rabidly anti-Shi'ite.

Thousands of people have been killed in tit-for-tat sectarian violence going back to the 1980s.

The majority of Pakistan's Muslims are Sunni, but around 15 percent of the nation of 170 million people are Shi'ite.