Suicide bomber, police kill 29 Shias in Kurram, Pakistan

At least 26 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Kurram tribal region in Pakistan on Friday. The man was standing outside of a mosque when he detonated his vest full of explosives. The mosque was located in Parachinar, which is the region’s main town. The bomber waited until after prayers on Friday and chose the mosque because it was in a busy marketplace. This is the latest in a long list of attacks by Sunnis against Shiites. Kurram has a significant Shiite population and it’s really the only part of the border region in Pakistan that has such. The tribal region has been hit hard by sectarian violence and the presence of al Qaeda and the Taliban has contributed to decades of fighting.

After the bombing, a group of protestors in Parachinar was fired on by police and that resulted in another three people dead. The leader of a terrorist cell that broke away from the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. Fazal Saeed said that the reason the Shiites were targeted in Parachinar was because the Parachinar local government has sided with the Shiites. Saeed was once a part of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, but formed his own cell after fighting with the group’s leaders.

Saeed is believed to have ties to Haqqani, which is one of the deadliest cells of the Afghan Taliban. The three groups – the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, and the TTP – are all fighting NATO coalition forces in Afghanistan. In addition, all three have targeted Shiites for many years. There are many regions of Pakistan that are held by one of the three groups, even though there have been many operations by the Pakistani military to bring down the militant groups. Dozens of militants have been killed in the fighting in just this month alone.

NATO and U.S. forces are due to complete their withdrawal by the end of 2014; however, the presence of these militant groups has led many to question if security in the region can be maintained.

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