The ethnic cleansing of Shia in Pakistan is escalating

I looked at the trending topics in Twitter.  The first one, below the promoted topic, was #Karachi.

It couldn't be anything but bad news, I decided.  Why else would Karachi trend way up!  The only question I had was about the number left dead. And injured.


I checked in with the BBC:

At least 25 people have been killed by a bomb explosion in the Pakistani city of Karachi, police say.
The blast in the mainly Shia Muslim area of Abbas town destroyed several buildings and set others on fire. Some reports spoke of a second explosion. 

Terrible. Simply terrible!

The Dawn reported likewise:

Caption at the paper: "Eyewitness photograph from site of the blasts. -Photo by Azad Qalamdar"

At least 28 people have been killed and 55 others injured as a result. The dead and injured have been rushed to local hospitals.
The explosion happened in Abbas Town, outside a mosque.
A cloud of smoke has been witnessed from the site of the incident. The blasts were heard from far distances.

The BBC report included this:

Pakistan's main political and religious leaders rushed to condemn the attack - the latest to target the Shia minority.
Last month nearly 90 people were killed in a bomb attack on a Shia area in the south western city of Quetta. 

I am reminded of the worry I had expressed in the op-ed that was published last Monday:

A particularly worrisome aspect of these bombings is that they indicate worsening sectarian conflict, with militant Sunni Muslim outfits intent on cleansing the areas of the Shia Muslim minority.

Why people kill each other, especially in the name of religion, is simply way, way, beyond my imagination. I remember being moved to tears when I saw the row of headless Buddha statues in Ayutthaya, in Thailand.  Buddha's statues decapitated by Buddhist warriors from Burma fighting the Buddhist warriors from Thailand, when the whole world equates Buddhism with peace.

The following Tweets sum it all up for me:

You know whats wrong with #Pakistan - When people are busy counting the wickets rather than the dead we lost in Abbas Town #Karachi #SAvPAK
— Mansoor Ali Khan (@MansoorGeoNews) March 3, 2013

#Karachi When will we see better days?
— Samir Yawar (@samiryaw) March 3, 2013