Armed men opened fire on Shiite Muslim worshipers during a religious procession in Quetta, Pakistan, yesterday, killing at least 41 people and wounding more than 150 others, authorities said.

　　The city mayor declared an immediate curfew.

　　Officials reported an explosion and gunfire in a congested area of Quetta, the main city in southwest Baluchistan province, as a procession of hundreds of Shiite Muslims marking Ashoura, the most important day in the Muslim holy month of Muharram, passed by.

　　Soon after, a Sunni Muslim mosque, a television network office and several shops were set afire as Shiites rioted in parts of the city, and an exchange of gunfire took place near the scene of the initial attack, police said.

　　Mohammed Wasim, a doctor at the Central Government Hospital in Quetta, said the facility had received 19 bodies. The Combined Military Hospital reported 22 bodies were brought in since the attack early yesterday afternoon.

　　A senior intelligence official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that authorities had separated the remains of one of the suspected attackers, and that there was evidence he may have blown himself up.

　　Qamar Zaman, an assistant police inspector in Quetta, said that more than 150 people had been injured, some of them critically.

　　Government officials said the carnage was an effort by extremist groups to destabilize the country.

　　President General Pervez Musharraf has become a staunch ally of the US war on terrorism, earning the ire of Islamic fundamentalists. He narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in December.

　　"Obviously, the purpose of this attack was to create unrest," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told AP. "This is a very sad incident and we condemn it."

　　The violence occurred hours after a series of coordinated blasts in Iraq struck major Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing scores of religious pilgrims. There was no indication the attacks were connected.

　　Mayor Abdul Rahim Kakar told AP that he had imposed an immediate curfew in the city of 1.2 million to maintain law and order. He said troops and paramilitary forces had been deployed and were bringing the situation under control.

　　"I was present near the procession when we first heard an explosion and then some people fired shots," he said. "We still do not know what kind of explosion it was."

　　Meanwhile, two people - one Shiite and one Sunni - were killed and 40 other people wounded in a clash between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Phalia, a town in Punjab province, about 160 kilometers east of Islamabad, said Nisar Ali Shah, a local police official.

　　The shootout happened during a Shiite procession, and people from the two sides then set several houses on fire, Shah said.

　　In Quetta, gunshots continued to ring out in the city nearly an hour after the killings, said Khyzar Hayyat, another police official. "The situation is very bad," he said.

　　Riaz Khan, Quetta's police chief, said that a Sunni mosque was set afire and was partially destroyed.

　　Ijaz Khan, a reporter for the private GEO television network, said six unidentified people entered the GEO office there and set it afire.

　　Quetta was the site of one of the deadliest acts of sectarian violence in Pakistan. Attackers armed with machine-guns and grenades stormed a Shiite Muslim mosque in the city in July, killing 50 people.

　　Shiites are a substantial minority in Quetta. Sectarian violence runs strong in Quetta's Baluchistan province, where radical Islamic groups share power with more moderate Sunni parties.

　　Allama Hassan Turabi, a senior Pakistani Shiite leader, demanded that President General Pervez Musharraf - who has repeatedly vowed to defeat extremism in the Islamic country - sack government officials including the interior minister for failing to prevent yesterday's attack.

　　"This is not the first attack against us. Our people are not safe at homes. They are not safe in mosques," he said from Karachi.

　　Security had been stepped up nationwide in anticipation of Muharram, a month of mourning when Shiite Muslims recall the seventh-century death of Hussein, grandson of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

　　Shiites mark the occasion with religious processions, wearing black clothes as a sign of mourning and whipping themselves, in a sign of penitence over Hussein's death.

　　Most of Pakistan's Sunni and Shiite Muslims live peacefully together, but small radical groups on both sides are responsible for frequent attacks. About 97 percent of Pakistan's population is Muslim, and Sunnis outnumber Shiites by a ratio of about 4-to-1.

　　(The Associated Press)