At least 5 killed in Afghan Sunni-Shi'ite clash
Posted on: Thursday, 9 February 2006, 06:09 CST
KABUL (Reuters) - Clashes broke out between members of Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority and Sunnis at a religious festival on Thursday and at least five people were killed and 27 wounded, a doctor said.
"We have some five or six dead bodies lying outside the hospital, they have been brought here, and inside the hospital we have 27 wounded," said Sayed Ahmad Alemi, a doctor at the main hospital in the western city of Herat.
Ten people were killed in Afghanistan this week in protests over cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad published in European newspapers, but police in Herat said the violence had nothing to do with that controversy.
Herat police official Nisar Ahmad Paikar a brawl broke out at a gathering for the Ashura commemoration after a group of Sunnis accused Shi'ites of tearing up a sacred flag.
The fighting intensified and 10 people were wounded when a grenade was thrown and several Shi'ite mosques were set on fire, said a Defense Ministry official who declined to be identified.
Police fired into the air to break up the fighting, residents said.
Alemi said some of the wounded were being treated for gun shots and some had been beaten.
About 80 percent of Afghans are Sunni Muslim, with most of the remainder Shi'ite.
In recent years there has been no serious trouble between members of the different sects, unlike in neighboring Pakistan where militants from the different sects regularly attack each other.
There were no reports of disturbances over the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Thursday after three days of violent demonstrations.
Afghanistan's latest violence comes as NATO countries are preparing to expand a peacekeeping mission, and after a wave of bomb attacks on foreign and Afghan forces and civilian targets blamed on Taliban and al Qaeda militants.
Ashura marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad.
Source: REUTERS
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