ahmadi

LAHORE: Gunmen attacked worshippers from a religious minority in two worship places in Lahore on Friday, taking hostages and killing at least 30 people, officials said.

The gunmen opened fire shortly after Friday prayers and threw grenades at two Ahmadi worship places in Lahore’s Model Town and Garhi Shahu neighbourhoods.

Rizwan Naseer, director general of an ambulance service, told Reuters 30 bodies had been taken to hospitals in the city.

City officials had earlier put the death toll at 14.

“There are some hostages and we are planning an attack,” said Haider Ashraf, a senior police office in the neighbourhood of Garhi Shahu. “Their lives are under threat.”

Shooting continued at Garhi Shahu.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban.

“The operation is not even over yet, so it’s too early to say who is behind these attacks. But my guess is that like most other attacks, there would be some link to the Taliban or their associated militants,” said a Lahore-based security official.
Bustling Lahore has seen numerous attacks over the past few years as the Islamist insurgency that besets Pakistan spread from its mountainous northwest to the settled plains of Punjab province. The province is Pakistan’s economic, political and military heartland, and Lahore is its capital.

But Friday’s attack was the first on Ahmadis in Lahore. The sect was founded centuries after the death of Muhammad, the founder of Islam and believed by most of the faithful to be the final prophet, by a man who also claimed be a prophet.