A suicide bomber attacked a hospital emergency room where Shia Muslims were mourning a bank manager today, killing 10people including a journalist and two policemen in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
At least 47 people were wounded.
The explosion underscores the poor security conditions in Pakistan, a US ally where sectarian violence remains a problem even as al-Qaeda and Taliban militants pose a growing - and linked - threat.
Gunshots rang out after the explosion at the Civil Hospital, and rescuers carried away the dead and wounded, TV footage showed.
Among the dead was a cameraman working for Pakistan's Samaa TV, said a hospital official. Two policemen also died in the apparent sectarian attack, police said.
Journalists were at the hospital covering the aftermath of this morning's shooting of the bank manager, who came from a prominent Shia family. A gunman shot him as he stepped out of his car outside the bank on a major city road, officials said.
The emergency room was full of his friends and relatives when the bomber struck at the gate, police official Mohammad Sabir said.
Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, and it is believed to be a major center for the leadership of the Afghan Taliban. However, the violence that occurs in Baluchistan has been blamed on Baluch separatist groups or tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
In February, suspected Sunni militants bombed a bus carrying Shia worshippers and two hours later attacked a hospital treating the victims, killing 25 people and wounding 100 in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.
And in August 2008, a suicide blast outside the emergency ward of a hospital crowded with Shia Muslim mourners in the volatile northwest town of Dera Ismail Khan killed at least 27 people, including two police.
Suspected Sunni extremists also have attacked funeral processions of Shia Muslim mourners.
Extremist Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan have targeted each other's leaders in violence that dates well before the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. But several of Pakistan's Sunni extremist groups also are allied with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
AP