Thousands mourn Pakistan cadets

A Shia cleric urged the crowd not to respond with violence

About 10,000 minority Shia Muslims have marched through the Pakistani city of Quetta demanding justice for 11 Shia police cadets shot dead on Sunday.

The mourners beat their chests and chanted death to extremist Sunnis as funerals for the recruits were held.

Twenty suspects have been detained in connection with the machine-gun attack in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, the authorities say.

Police are treating the attack as sectarian.

At least nine other cadets were wounded.

Hundreds of policemen on high alert provided security along the seven-kilometre funeral route.

We have detained some people and more detentions will be made soon

Humayun Jogezai
Balochistan deputy police chief

Many mourners chanted "death to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi" and "death to Sipah-e-Sahaba", referring to two of the most notorious extremist Sunni organisations in Pakistan.

Both have been banned by the government.

Uniformed policeman saluted and blew bugles as the 11 coffins were lowered into the graves.

"I urge people to be peaceful and not to harm anyone," said Shia cleric Allama Juma Asadi, who offered prayers for the dead during the funeral.

Security tightened

The suspects rounded up overnight in Quetta were from Sipah-e-Sahaba, police say.

Security has been tightened at Sunni and Shia places of worship in the city.

Businesses and schools have closed in mourning for the cadets.

No group has said it was behind the killing - the second in a week targeting Shias.

Thousands of people have been killed in violence blamed on militants from the country's Sunni and Shia communities since the late 1980s.

On Sunday, the inspector-general of police in Balochistan, Shoeb Suddle, told the BBC's Urdu service that the attack might have been the work of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Checkpoints

Sunday's bloody attack happened near the city's fruit market.

"Two men came riding on a motorbike and opened fire with a Kalashnikov at the vehicle carrying the police recruits to their school at 1600 (1100 GMT)," police officer Raja Ishtiaq told the AFP news agency.

One of the survivors, M Ali, told AFP from hospital that he believed it was a sectarian attack "because we all are [Shia] and ethnic Hazaras".

Distraught relatives identified victims' bodies at Quetta hospital

Police fanned out across the city, setting up checkpoints.

The governor and chief minister of Balochistan visited the hospital where the injured were being treated and promised the culprits would be found.

Last Friday, two armed men riding on a motorbike sprayed bullets at Shia activist Syed Niaz Hussain Shah, 50, as he was returning home from his office in the city.

A week earlier, a Shia trader was also killed.

In April, Pakistani police arrested Shabir Ahmed, a suspected member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been linked to the killings of both Shia Muslims and Christians.

The group has also been accused of having connections with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan.

Shia and Sunni Muslims disagree over who was the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed following his death.