Suicide bombers have rammed into a bus in Karachi then hit a hospital to which casualties were being ferried, killing 25 people in the second round of attacks on Shi'ites in the Pakistani city in weeks.
Women and children were among the 12 people killed when a suicide attacker rammed a motorbike bomb into a bus carrying Shi'ites on one of Karachi's busiest roads on Friday, gutting the bus and sending glass flying, officials and witnesses said.
A second bomber killed 13 people, damaging ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital, where the victims of the first attack were being treated and anxious relatives were gathering.
The attacks in a city largely isolated from Islamist insurgent violence highlighted the terrorist threat in Pakistan, which is on the front line of the US war on Al-Qaeda. Militants have killed over 3,000 people in Pakistan since 2007.
Sectarian violence periodically flares between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, who account for about 20 per cent of Pakistan's 167 million-strong population. Such violence has killed more than 4,000 people since the late 1980s.
Bomb rigged inside TV
Officials were working to defuse a third bomb in the hospital vicinity, rigged inside a television, said bomb disposal official Munir Ahmad Sheikh.
Witnesses and officials said the bus was packed with Shi'ite Muslims heading to a religious procession to mark the last day of the holy month of Muharram in Karachi, a southern port city of 16 million people on the Arabian sea.
"I heard a deafening explosion. I saw stretchers flying in the air. Two men fell just in front of me. I think they died," said Azam Ali, 26, who went to the hospital to inquire about a cousin wounded in the bus attack.
"Those killed and injured were mostly Shi'ites. They were relatives of those hurt in the first blast."
Mohammad Mehboob, a volunteer with Pakistani charity EDHI, said: "Three of my colleagues were injured and five ambulances were almost destroyed. We survived certain death. It's a miracle that we're alive."
After the attack on the bus, nails from the bomb pierced the walls and doors of a bungalow on the side of the road. Blood stained the inside of the bus and shoes could be seen lying nearby on the road, said an AFP reporter.
"Twelve mourners died in the first blast and 13 people died in the second blast. More than 100 people were injured in both the blasts," Sagheer Ahmed, health minister for the southern province of Sindh, told AFP.
"Fifteen people are critically injured, hanging between life and death," the minister said.
PM appeals for calm
The US embassy in Islamabad condemned the "terrorist attacks" and Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani appealed for calm in the politically volatile city, where violence has killed up to 85 party activists so far this year.
"We have found the body parts, blood and brain of the suicide bombers. Fifteen to 20 kilograms of explosives were used in first attack, and 10 kilograms in the second," said Sheikh, the bomb disposal official.
It was the deadliest bombing in Pakistan since 101 people were killed at a volleyball match in the northwestern district of Lakki Marwat on New Year's Day, and follows a recent decline in militant activity.
On December 28, a bombing killed 43 people and reduced to a bloodbath a parade marking the holiest Shi'ite day of Ashura, earlier in Muharram.
Pakistan's feared Taliban network claimed responsibility for that attack, sparking riots that caused huge financial losses.
US officials believe Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who oversaw a major increase in bomb attacks and plotted with Al-Qaeda to kill five CIA agents in Afghanistan, was probably killed in a US drone attack last month.
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