Suicide bomber inside Pakistan Shiite mosque kills self

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A suicide attacker blew himself up in a Shiite Muslim mosque in a city near Pakistan's capital on Saturday, Pakistani officials told The Associated Press.

Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan said two people were injured in the blast, and the bomber was killed.

The explosives went off prematurely, and the bomber was still a distance from worshippers inside the Yadgar-e-Hussein mosque when the blast occurred, said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. The incident happened in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to the capital, Islamabad.

Ahmed said the explosives did not appear to be very powerful. Television pictures showed the bomber's body amid broken glass in a hall at the mosque.

The attack occurred as Shiite Muslims were marking the holiday of Muharram. A separate prayer room at the mosque was packed with worshippers.

Muharram is a month of mourning when Shiite Muslims recall the seventh-century death of Hussein, grandson of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

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 8-to-2.

Security has been stepped up in Pakistan for the holiday. Officials on Saturday announced a plan to increase security at airports nationwide, though they said they had no intelligence of a specific threat.

An attack in July on a Shiite Muslim mosque in the southwestern city of Quetta killed more than 50 worshippers.

That prayer-time attack on the packed mosque sent Shiites on a rampage through the southwestern city. The government called in troops and imposed a curfew to try to quell the violence.

Scores more were wounded in the attack, one of the bloodiest in a long series of assaults on the Shiite Muslim minority.

In October, six Shiite employees of Pakistan's space agency were killed when the bus they were traveling in was fired on by two armed men.

Also in October, gunmen assassinated a hardline Sunni politician, Maulana Azam Tariq, as he drove on the outskirts of Islamabad.