Attackers Hit Mosques Of Islamic Sect In Pakistan

May 28, 2010

Author: Waqar Gillani and Jane Perlez

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/world/asia/29pstan.html

Hafeez Malik heard the gunfire outside the mosque, then shots inside the prayer hall.

“People were dying one after the other,” said Mr. Malik, a 55-year-old architect. “I could count more than 20 people dead around me.”

From inside another mosque several miles away near the central train station, his brother, Abdul Rashid Malik, 65, an engineer, called his family on his cellphone. He was a hostage and had been shot in the leg, he said. He has not been heard from since, Hafeez Malik said.

More than 80 worshipers of a minority Muslim sect, the Ahmadis, were killed and more than 110 wounded Friday in a coordinated assault by seven well-trained attackers on two mosques in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, the authorities said.