At least 40 people have been killed and more than 100 wounded after a car bomb exploded at a rally to commemorate an assassinated militant religious leader in central Pakistan.
The blast ripped through a crowd of mourners leaving the overnight rally attended by several thousand in the city of Multan to mark the first anniversary of the shooting of extremist Sunni religious leader Azam Tariq.
"It was dark and people were screaming for help," said one witness. "It was utter chaos."
The attack came just days after a suicide bomber killed 30 people at a minority Shia Muslim mosque in the eastern city of Sialkot on October 2 and Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said it could have been a sectarian act of revenge.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, convened an emergency meeting and the Interior Ministry would propose a ban on large religious gatherings, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told reporters.
The rally had ended and people were dispersing in pre-dawn darkness from a meeting ground in the Rasheedabad area when the bomb exploded, said Sikander Hayat, police chief in Multan, a city 425 km southwest of the capital, Islamabad.
Hospital officials said at least 40 people were killed and more than 100 wounded, 30 of them seriously.
Troops were deployed in the streets after about 3,000 Sunni protesters gathered outside the main Nishtar hospital to collect bodies for burial and chanted slogans against Shias and against President Pervez Musharraf.