(18 Jan 2008) SHOTLIST :
1. Wide of crowds carrying a coffin of one of the victims of Thursday night's blast at a Shiite mosque
2. Various of coffins being carried by people
3. Various of mourners gathered to perform the last prayers for the victims
4. Wide of the relatives of the victims chanting
5. Mid of relatives chanting
6. Mid of the mourners taking the bodies for burial
7. Security forces guard the streets of Peshawar
8. Guard manning a mounted gun
STORYLINE:
Sharpshooters on rooftops guarded holy sites on Friday in Pakistan after a suspected Sunni extremist blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque Thursday, killing 11 people and stoking fears of more attacks.
The strike late on Thursday in the northwestern city of Peshawar wounded 25 people, including a prominent Shiite cleric, ahead of this weekend's Ashura commemoration, which often is scarred by sectarian violence.
Hundreds of grieving Shiites attended funerals, crying and beating their chests.
AP Television filmed mourners praying over the coffins before the victims were laid to rest.
The blast added to tensions in Pakistan as it prepares for the February 18 parliamentary elections that many predict will weaken President Pervez Musharraf's grip on power eight years after he seized control of the nuclear-armed nation in a military coup.
Militants have launched a wave of suicide attacks against security forces and politicians in recent months, killing at least 400 people, including secular opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who had vowed to battle Islamic extremism.
Bhutto's political party have alleged allies of President Pervez Musharraf may have had a hand in the killing, charges that have resonated widely in Pakistan, where distrust toward the U.S.-allied leader runs high.
Police and paramilitary forces mounted barbed wire barricades to control access to Shiite mosques in Peshawar.
Shiite rites during the holy month of Muharram culminate in Ashura, when tens of thousands of the minority group stage processions and beat their bare backs with chains and blades, bloodying themselves in a sign of penitence.
Sunni extremists, who regard Shiites as heretics, often launch attacks on the community during the month.
In 2005, about 50 people were killed when a bomb ripped through a Shiite shrine in southwestern Pakistan.
During Muharram, Shiites mourn the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein, an event that led to the split in Islam between the Shiite and Sunni sects.
Sunnis outnumber Shiites by about four to one in this overwhelmingly Islamic nation of 160 million people.
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