Tweet
Gunmen have launched simultaneous attacks on two mosques of the minority Ahmadi Islamic sect in Lahore, killing some 70 people, Pakistani police say.
The death toll has been rising as rescuers pull bodies from the mosques, which were packed for Friday midday prayers at the time of the attacks.
Police say they have secured both buildings, but they are still searching for militants who fled the scene.
Lahore has been the scene of a string of brazen militant attacks.
No-one has yet said they carried out the attacks but suspicion has fallen on the Pakistani Taliban, Ali Dayan Hassan of Human Rights Watch told the BBC.
Mr Hassan said the worshippers were "easy targets" for militant Sunni groups who consider the Ahmadis to be infidels.
The attacks come as controversy rages in Pakistan over "blasphemous" caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.
'Indiscriminate' firing
Police say most of the worshippers who had been taken hostage inside the mosque in the heavily built-up Garhi Shahu area have managed to get out, the BBC's Aleem Maqbool reports from Islamabad.
Eyewitness: Mosque attack
Pakistani forces are going room-to-room at the mosque and combing buildings in the area in the search for militants, our correspondent says.
The police have warned that some of the militants managed to flee and could be at large with their suicide belts, he adds.
Police took control of the other mosque in the nearby Model Town area after a two-hour gunfight.
Gunmen opened fire indiscriminately at the mosque, before security forces managed to kill one militant and capture two others, eyewitnesses told the BBC.
WHO ARE THE AHMADIS?
- A minority Islamic sect founded in 1889, Ahmadis believe their own founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908, was a prophet
- This is anathema to most Muslims who believe the last prophet was Muhammad, who died in 632
- Most Ahmadi followers live in the Indian subcontinent
- Ahmadis have been the subject of sectarian attacks and persecution in Pakistan and elsewhere
- In 1974 the Pakistani government declared the sect non-Muslim
They were said to be armed with AK-47 rifles, shotguns, grenades and possibly other explosive devices.
TV footage showed one attacker atop a minaret, firing an assault rifle and throwing grenades as police engaged in a fierce gunfight with militants below.
A dozen ambulances have taken the dead and injured to hospitals.
The attacks come after at least 45 people were killed in March when two suicide bombers attacked a crowded residential area.
Sectarian attacks have been carried out by various militant groups in Punjab province, and across Pakistan in the past.
While the Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and follow all Islamic rituals, they were declared non-Muslim in Pakistan in 1973, and in 1984 they were legally barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims.
Members of the community have often been mobbed, or gunned down in targeted attacks, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.
But this is the first time their places of worship have suffered daring and well co-ordinated attacks that bear the mark of Taliban militants, our correspondent adds.
Comment