Photo: ABDUL MAJEED / AFP / Getty Images
When Friday prayers came to an end on 28 May 2010 in Lahore, Pakistan, seven terrorists armed with weapons , grenades and suicide vests stormed two crowded Ahmadi Muslim mosques and opened fire, killing 94 victims and wounding To over 120. The coordinated attacks took place just a few minutes away.
At the Bait-ul-Noor Mosque in Model Town, an upmarket neighborhood in Lahore , people ran for their lives when three armed men entered with AK-assault rifles 47 and grenades , opening fire on security personnel and worshipers alike.
The attack lasted for over an hour as the attackers fired into the horrified crowd, 27 Dead people.
Several kilometers away, near Lahore’s main railway station, three other attackers broke into the mosque in Dar- ul-Zakir with the same destructive intentions. They shot at the congregation and took several hundred people hostage.
A three-hour standoff ensued, when the police and the terrorists exchanged shots. Two of the attackers then detonated their suicide vests, killing 67.
The nightmare did not end for the survivors on the day of attacks on mosques. A few days later, armed men attacked the Intensive Care Unit of Jinnah Hospital in Lahore, where the victims were recovering and one of the alleged attackers. Twelve more people, including police officers and hospital staff, were killed. The attackers escaped.
A Punjab provincial chapter of the Taliban claimed responsibility for all the attacks.
Although the incidents came as a horrible surprise, a leader of the Model Town mosque said they had been receiving threatening phone calls in the weeks before the attacks. When the leaders of the mosque approached the police to ask for more security, they received no response.
Unfortunately, threats and violence are nothing new to the Ahmadi, who always meet with the discrimination of the majority Muslim sects.
Although Ahmadi consider themselves Muslim, Pakistani law does not. does. Even an act as simple as declaring oneself a Muslim is considered blasphemy under the law and can be punished by fines, imprisonment or death.
Conservative Sunni Muslims have led a recent campaign to ostracize Ahmadis, and Sunni extremists have targeted them in violence .
The victims of the attacks were buried in Rabwah, the home of the Ahmadi religious headquarters. Although Pakistan’s ministers, politicians and other prominent figures issued statements condemning the attackers and their actions, none of them attended the services, likely fearing a political and religious backlash for publicly supporting the much-criticized sect.
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