Burnt alive in KFC
2005-05-31 08:55
Karachi - Six people were burnt alive when a mob protesting a suicide bombing of a mosque torched an outlet of an American fast food chain in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, police said on Tuesday.
Police and firemen recovered the bodies of six Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) employees after an angry mob set the restaurant on fire late on Monday following a suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim mosque here that left five people dead.
“Their bodies were found during the search of KFC,” city police chief Tariq Jamil said.
Four of the victims at the restaurant were burned to death while the two others froze to death after taking refuge in a refrigeration unit at the restaurant, senior police official Manzoor Mughal said.
Three attackers stormed the minority Shiite Madinat-ul-Ilm mosque in the middle-class Gulshan neighbourhood during evening prayers late on Monday.
One of the assailants died in a gunbattle with police while the other blew himself up and the third sustained a serious head injury in a fall, Jamil said.
Hospital officials said the man was unconscious but in stable condition.
Police believe his survival could be the key to the investigation into suicide bombings.
Two worshippers and one policeman also died in the attack, while 21 people, four of whom were in a critical condition, were hospitalised.
Angry protesters went on the rampage after the attack, setting fire to two gas stations and a number of vehicles in addition to the KFC outlet.
It is unclear why the restaurant was targeted, although it is heavily associated with the United States. and rioters in Pakistan typically attack symbols of Washington while on a rampage. Anti-US feeling grew in Pakistan after President General Pervez Musharraf allied the country with Washington in the war on terror after September 11 2001.
The attack on the mosque came just three days after 19 people, most of them Shiites, died in a suicide bomb blast at a Muslim shrine near the capital Islamabad.
Thousands of Shiite and majority Sunni Muslims have been killed in sectarian bloodshed in Pakistan in recent years, with attacks including bomb blasts, suicide bombings and targeted killings. Last year 160 people were killed. - AP/AFP
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