JHANG, Pakistan - Police exchanged fire with rioting demonstrators yesterday at the funeral for an assassinated hard-line Sunni Muslim politician, and at least one person died in sectarian violence elsewhere in the country.
Maulana Azam Tariq, the one-time leader of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Sunni extremist group and a member of Parliament, was gunned down in Islamabad Monday along with three bodyguards and a driver. Many feared his death could set off more sectarian bloodletting.
A previously unknown Shiite group, calling itself the Fedayeen Imam Mahdi, claimed responsibility for the attack in e-mail to journalists. The group accused Tariq of working with Jews to split the unity of the Islamic world.
In Jhang, where Tariq's body was flown after a violent funeral in the capital, Sunni rioters burned down a Shiite mosque and set a gas station pump on fire. Gunshots rang out at a sports stadium where at least 25,000 people had gathered.
Three police officers were wounded in clashes with rioters, two of them seriously.
Many in the crowd chanted slogans against Shiites and against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, calling the Pakistani leader a dog.
Most schools and shops in the city were closed and hundreds of policemen, many riding trucks mounted with machine guns, patrolled the streets. Extra army troops were called into the city, the headquarters of Tariq's sectarian political movement, to maintain order.
Tariq was to be buried inside a complex in Jhang that once served as the center for Sipah-e-Sahaba.
Earlier, hundreds of Islamic seminary students went on a rampage after a funeral service outside Parliament, setting fire to a Shiite Muslim shrine and a movie theater, smashing shop windows and chanting anti-Shiite slogans. A 24-year-old theater employee died after being overcome by smoke, and eight other people were injured.
Rioters also set ablaze the Sakhi Mahmoood shrine - a Shiite shrine that also is popular with many Sunnis. Caretaker Gauhar Ali said everything inside the tomb was burned down.
Thousands flooded a main traffic intersection in the capital for the funeral service.
Shiites are infidels! many in the crowd chanted, as hundreds of heavily armed police looked on. Police used batons to disperse the crowd, and the streets were quiet by yesterday afternoon.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, security was extremely tight. In the northern city of Gilgit, demonstrators blocked roads and chanted anti-Shiite slogans. Five people were injured in clashes with police in the area.
No arrests have been made in Tariq's killing.
Maulana Ali Sher Haideri, chairman of Tariq's Millat-e-Islamia political party, accused Iran and Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat of complicity in his death. Hayyat is a Shiite, and Iran is a Shiite majority country.
We are 100 percent sure that Iran and Faisal Saleh Hayyat has a hand in this tragedy
Haideri said.
Tariq was detained by Pakistan at the start of the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan to prevent him from leading pro-Taliban rallies. His group was later banned as Musharraf sought to purge the country of extremism and terrorism.
Tariq won a seat in Parliament from behind bars in October 2002, and he was released shortly afterward when a court in the eastern city of Lahore ruled the government had not produced enough evidence to hold him.
Although Tariq denied supporting armed struggle, Sipah-e-Sahaba - or the Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, was blamed by police for more than 400 killings in sectarian violence in recent years. The group also has strong ties to Afghanistan's former Taliban leaders.
Most of Pakistan's Sunnis and Shiites live together peacefully, but small extremist groups on both sides launch frequent attacks. Last week, six Shiites were killed in an attack on a bus in the southern port city of Karachi. More than 50 Shiite worshippers were killed in an attack on a mosque in the southwestern city of Quetta in July.
Since his release from prison, Tariq had become a supporter of the government of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, a Musharraf ally. 17
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The Associated Press
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A police officer opens fire on angry supporters of Maulana Azam Tariq, the one-time leader of the outlawed Sunni extremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba and a member of Parliament, yesterday in Islamabad, Pakistan. Hundreds of Islamic seminary students wielding st
