A man injured in the bomb blast in a Shia mosque lies on a hospital bed surrounded by his relatives in Karachi. (AFP)

Islamabad, May 31: Fourteen persons were killed and 35 injured when a powerful bomb exploded in a Shia mosque in Karachi this evening, hospital sources said.

A state of emergency has been declared in all the city’s hospitals, they added. The police blocked all roads leading to and from Ali Raza Mosque where the explosion occurred while people were preparing for evening prayers.

Karachi had feared fresh sectarian violence after the killing yesterday of Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, a radical Sunni preacher, and thousands of police were on duty at the city’s mosques in anticipation of a backlash.

The government’s chief spokesman told Geo Television that President Pervez Musharraf planned to take tough measures to restore order in the city.

This was the fifth terror incident in little over 20 days in Karachi. On May 7, a powerful bomb blast at a Shia mosque left 23 dead. A similar attack on another Shia mosque in the southwestern town of Quetta also killed over three dozen worshippers in March this year.

Pakistani information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad condemned the “ghastly incident” while talking to reporters. He said: “This is unfortunate that the people were not safe even in the mosques and being killed in the name of Islam by unscrupulous elements”.

He said President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali had also condemned the incident.

“The government had taken a very serious view of the latest incident and will take an important decision to curb terrorism,” Rashid quoted Musharraf as saying.

Karachi is the home of not only Urdu-speaking migrants from India but also of ethnic Pashtuns and Sindhis.

One worshipper, a man called Saddiqan, said he was on his way into the mosque when the explosion knocked him off his feet. “I saw two dead bodies without limbs lying on the ground,” he said.

Anger among the several hundred people gathered outside the bombed mosque spilled over and a mob set fire to a nearby petrol pump, a police van and a private car. “I can hear gun shots and the angry crowd is torching cars and tyres, while a gas station has already been burnt,” a witness said.

Police were unable to get near the mosque because the crowd was letting in only ambulances.

The situation in Karachi worsened after Musharraf banned five extremist and sectarian militant outfits in January 2002.