The blast is the second attack on Shia Muslims in Pakistan in a week At least 22 people have died in a suicide bombing at a Shia Muslim rally in Quetta city, south-western Pakistan.
More than 40 others were injured in the explosion in the Meezan Chowk area.
The blast at a student-organised Palestinian solidarity march was the second deadly attack on Pakistan’s Shia Muslim minority this week.
Rallies take place across Pakistan every year on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to support the Palestinian demand for a homeland.
Gunfire
“At least 22 dead bodies have been moved to different hospitals. More than 40 people have been injured,” news agency AFP quoted senior police officer Akbar Magsi as saying.
TV pictures showed chaotic street scenes in the aftermath of the explosion. Survivors fired guns in the air in the pandemonium, said police.
Reports said several Pakistani journalists were among those injured.
Shia leader Allama Abbas Kumaili appealed for calm, telling a Pakistani TV channel: “We understand these are attempts to bring Sunni and Shia sects against each other.”
Shia Muslims make up an estimated one in five of Pakistan’s Sunni-dominated population of 160 million.
The attack comes two days after bomb attacks on a Shia procession in Lahore killed 31 people on Wednesday. At least 170 people were injured when three bombs exploded targeting the procession. At least two of the attacks were suicide bombings, police said.
The Pakistani Taliban said it carried out the attacks in revenge for the killing of a Sunni leader last year.
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