Devotees perform 'Dhamal' at Pak shrine hit by suicide bombing

Grieving worshippers today thronged the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Sufi shrine and performed daily rituals, sending a strong message to the terrorists who killed at least 88 people in a suicide attack there.
The famous Sufi shrine at Sehwan in the Sindh province was closed due to security reasons following the deadly attack by an Islamic State suicide bomber yesterday.
The white marble floor at the shrine was still marked by blood and a pile of abandoned shoes and slippers was heaped in the courtyard, many of them belonging to victims.
The devotees performed 'Dhamal', a spiritual dance, after the sunset prayer.

Security was tightened in an around the shrine after yesterday's attack.
Undeterred by the tragedy, the custodian of the shrine, Syed Mehdi Raza Shah, turned up at the designated place at 3.30am and stood amidst the remains of the carnage to defiantly rang a traditional bell, which is a daily ritual.

"We will never bow before the terrorists," he said.
Shah told PTI from Sehwan that the devotees came despite the shrine being sealed off by the security forces for examination and collection of forensic evidence.
"Such cowardly terrorist attacks will never deter thousands of devotees of spiritual Sufi saints all over Pakistan from going to shrines to pray," he said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa have also visited Sehwan and met the injured in the hospital.
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was a Sufi philosopher-poet of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Earlier in the day, angry protesters today took to the streets against the Pakistan government's failure to provide security at the shrine.
They damaged vehicles and set a police van on fire and burnt tyres to block roads.
"There is only one scanner at the shrine for thousands of devotees who come to the shrine and even it was not working properly," a protester, who lost his brother and friends in the blast, told a television channel.

Relatives of the injured people complained about improper medical care facilities at the civil hospitals in Sehwan and Nawabshah.
Initial investigations said that there was no proper electricity at the shrine when the attack took place.
"Investigations point to the fact that the attacker came dressed in a Burqa and entered the shrine from the golden gate amidst the heavy crowd of devotees," DIG Hyderabad range Manzoor Rind said.
Hyderabad is the largest city closest to the town of Sehwan where the shrine was attacked.
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On January 26, intelligence agencies had sent a notice to the concerned ministries in Sindh and Islamabad that there was imminent terror threat to public places particularly shrines in the province.

The deadly suicide bomb attack at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is not the first such attack.
In November last year, 52 people were killed and around 100 wounded when a teenage suicide bomber blew himself up in the courtyard of the Shah Noorani shrine in a remote and mountainous area of Khuzdar district in the troubled Baluchistan province.
Many shrines in Pakistan including the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar have great historical significance and date back centuries.
At least three dozen shrines across the country have come under attack by the militants in the last decade in which hundreds of devotees have been killed in these attacks.

According to data compiled by the Center for Islamic Research Collaboration and Learning since 2005, at least 209 people have been killed and 570 injured in 29 terrorist attacks targeting shrines devoted to Sufi saints in Pakistan.
In March 2008, an attack on the 400-year-old shrine of Hazrat Abu Saeed Baba on the outskirts of Peshawar killed 10 villagers.
Inspector-General of Sindh A D Khawaja said that the suicide bomber dressed in a burqa had managed to enter into the courtyard in Sehwan due to security lapses.
"Security will be beefed up at all shrines in the province as thousands of devotees are going and coming at these shrines," he said.