Karachi: Having bid the final goodbye to the bus attack victims, Pakistan was on Thursday mourning the death of at least 45 Shia Ismailis who were massacred inside a bus by a bunch of armed gunmen.
As Pakistan was observing a day of national mourning amid tight security, hundreds of Pakistanis with grieving hearts paid their final tributes to the victims for which a mass funeral was held in Safoora Goth's Al - Azhar Garden area of the provincial capital city.
Local TV visuals flashed live footage of mourners attending the mass funeral of Shiite Ismailis.
The toll rose to 45 as two more injured passengers belonging to the Ismaili community succumbed to their wounds on Thursday.
President Mamnoon Hussain has assured people that peace will soon return to Karachi as Operation Zarb-i-Azb against terrorists had produced positive results, reported the Dawn.
Speaking at a ceremony in an engineering college, the President asked people to remain united against anti-state elements who are bent upon destabilising peace of Karachi.
The deadly attack that left the bus riddles with bullet holes and drenched in blood, was claimed by more than one militant group with media reports initially saying that a Pakistan Taliban splinter group Jundullah had carried out the attack.
However, later police found leaflets claiming that the attack was staged by an Islamic State-inspired group.
Also, terror-tracking website Site Intel Group tweeted that Khorasan Province, a division of the Islamic State (IS) in the Afghan-Pakistan region, claimed credit for the deadly attack.
The statement on leaflets claimed the attack was in retaliation to the killing of Lal Masjid students, deaths of terrorists in “staged” encounters by Karachi police, the 2013 killing of Sunni Muslims in Rawalpindi’s sectarian riots of Raja Market, and the “atrocities” committed by “Rawafidh” in Iraq and Yemen.
The leaflets, seen by AFP, are plain printed text documents with no IS emblems or insignia
Earlier, Jundullah's spokesperson Ahmed Marwat claimed responsibility for the attack.
"Shiites and Ahmadis are unbelievers, they are apostates and deserved death," the AFP quoted him as peaking over the phone from an undisclosed location.
Ahmed Marwat added that there were four, not six fighters, who had participated in the bus attack.
According to eye-witnesses, eight motorcycle-borne gunmen donning police uniforms stopped the bus, entered it and and shot the passengers in the head.
The bus was carrying over 60 passengers of the minority community near Safoora Chowk in Karachi.
The passengers, including men, women and children, were travelling to their place of worship near Aysha Manzil, police said.
Wednesday's attack was the second deadliest in Pakistan this year after 62 Shiite Muslims were killed in a suicide bombing in late January.
Leaflets calling for support of IS jihadists have been seen over recent months in parts of northwest Pakistan and pro-IS slogans have appeared on walls in several cities.
With Agency Inputs
