pakistan mosque

Pakistan mosque gunmen kill 20, take hostages
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen attacked two mosques belonging to a minority sect during Friday Prayers in Lahore, seizing worshipers and repelling police officers as they tried to rescue the hostages, witnesses said.

Sixteen people were killed, according to Sajjad Bhutta, the district administrator of Lahore. Hospital officials spoke of dozens more who were injured, and some news reports said that more than 20 people died.

More than an hour after the attacks started, two gunmen on the roof of a mosque near the rail station were still firing at security forces on the ground below them, said Qamar Suleman, a worshiper who was able to flee.
They are both mosques of the Ahmadis, also known as Qadiani, and have tens of thousands of members. Rights groups say the sect has long been persecuted in Pakistan and has remained an occasional target of sectarian attacks.

Lahore, a city of eight million near Pakistan’s border with India, has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,300 people in three years.

“Terrorists have attacked mosques. They are firing and using grenades. They have taken people inside the mosque hostage,” district civil defence official Muzhar Ahmed told AFP by telephone from the scene in Garhi Shahu.

Other attackers escaped and one fired at a television van before the area was made safe.
The minority sect call themselves Muslims but believe their founder declared himself a prophet centuries after Muhammad, who other Muslims believe was the final prophet.

Ahmadis have long been subject to informal and state-sanctioned discrimination in Pakistan.