10 killed as gunmen shoot at people leaving mosque in Pakistan

9 Aug, 2013 06:33 / Updated 11 years ago

Gunmen killed at least 10 people in an attack that targeted a Sunni mosque in the Pakistan city of Quetta on Friday. It comes a day after a suicide bombing at the city, which left 37 people dead.

The shooting, which was carried out on the day when most Pakistanis were celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan, also left 24 people wounded.

"Four gunmen opened fire when people were coming out of the mosque after saying Eid prayers," senior local police official Bashir Ahmad Brohi told AFP. 

The official said a former provincial minister, Ali Madad Jatak, was at the mosque at the time of the attack and was probably the target of the gunmen.

Earlier on Thursday a suicide bomber targeted a funeral of a policeman in Quetta, killing at least 37 people and wounding scores of others. One of the dead included the head of police operations in Baluchistan, Fayaz Sumbal.

The attacks come amid a terror alert issued by the US and some other Western countries, which closed many diplomatic posts in the Middle East and Africa and called for the evacuation of some. The US State Department ordered on Thursday all non-essential staff to leave its consulate in the Pakistani city of Lahore, the latest such move.