A bomb explosion outside a Shiite mosque in north Pakistan Tuesday killed at least three people and wounded 14 others in the latest sectarian attack to hit the nation, officials said.
The blast took place in the Gracy Lines neighbourhood of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which neighbours the capital Islamabad, as worshippers prayed inside the mosque, senior police official Akhtar Laleka said.
Hospital officials said at least three people were killed and 14 others were wounded.
"We have three bodies and 14 wounded people at our hospital," Asif Qadir Mir, chief of the local government hospital, told AFP.
There has been a rise in sectarian violence in Pakistan after several deadly clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups near Islamabad in November.
Allama Nasir Abbas from Islam's minority branch was killed late Sunday in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, after addressing a religious gathering.
On November 19, gunmen killed a senior Shiite university director along with his driver in Lahore, while another Shiite leader and his guard were killed in Karachi in early December.
Three days later, Shamsur Rehman Muawiya, chief of the Sunni extremist organisation Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jammat for Punjab province, was killed in Lahore.
Pakistan is rife with sectarian clashes, with Sunni militant groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban often attacking gatherings by Shiites, who constitute some 20 percent of the country's population.
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