AFP - Two suicide bombers killed Sunday at least 41 people by detonating bombs at the entrance of a Sufi shrine in central Pakistan, a country gripped by a wave of deadly attacks extremely Taliban allied with al-Qaeda police said.
The attack targeted the pilgrims who came to pray at the tomb of Sultan Ahmed, a Sufi saint of the 13th century, more known as Sakhi Sarwar in Dera Ghazi Khan district where the Taliban and other groups their allies are relatively active.
"Two suicide bombers blew up the bombs they were carrying when police tried to prevent them from entering," he told AFP Zahid Hussain Shah, a police officer contacted by phone on the scene.
"For now, we counted 41 dead," he said, adding that more than 70 people were injured.The victims are mostly pilgrims and people from, like every Sunday in many holy shrines of Islam in Pakistan, spend a day with family.
It was the fifth suicide attack in five days in Pakistan.
"Holy War" against Islamabad and Washington
Nearly 4,200 people were killed in three and a half years throughout Pakistan by a wave of more than 450 attacks - suicide for the most part - mostly perpetrated by the Taliban allied with al-Qaeda.
In the summer of 2007, they said - in unison with Osama bin Laden himself - jihad, "holy war" to Islamabad for its support since 2001 to end the "war against terrorism" in Washington .
Their targets are the institutions and security forces but Sunni insurgents multiplied in recent times, attacks against civilians, especially minorities, including Shiites (20% of the population), and symbols of Sufism, two schools of thought in Islam they see as impious and heretical.
Many attacks that targeted Shiites and Sufis (a mystical doctrine which are both followers of Sunni and Shia) have been in recent months by the Taliban or allied groups.
Sunday, two suicide bombers failed to enter the mausoleum, where the crowd is usually very compact every Sunday, prevented by the police now keep all places Sufi saints in the country, confirmed Ahmed Mubarak The police chief in the region.
A senior local official of the security forces told AFP on condition of anonymity, that those responsible for the sanctuary had received threats from militant fundamentalists.
Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province, is located not far from some tribal areas of north-west frontier with Afghanistan, a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban, the main sanctuary of Al Qaeda worldwide and a rear base for Afghan Taliban .
Pakistani Taliban and their allies claim generally those attacks that target security forces in retaliation, they say, the Pakistani army offensives and the regular shooting of missiles from unmanned drones American CIA to executives of Al-Qaeda and Taliban Pakistani and Afghan tribal areas.
