Taliban Pakistani militants are trying to create a sectarian rift, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Saturday, as a new wave of violence piled pressure on a government already struggling with a flood crisis. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on two Shi'ite rallies that killed 33 people in Lahore Wednesday and 65 in the city of Quetta Friday. The attacks ended a lull after devastating floods which affected 20 million people. Pakistani officials had said before the attacks that any major violence at such a difficult time was likely to cause deep popular resentment against the militants. Malik said Al-Qaeda linked militants were trying to whip up sectarianism after taking a beating in their strongholds in the country's northwest in a string of military offensives. “Sectarianism that has been there for 62 years (since the creation of Pakistan), they stoked it again,” he told reporters in Islamabad. Warning that militants would launch attacks again “wherever there is a vulnerable situation” he said “they are using it as a weapon to terrorise people.” Thousands have been killed in sectarian violence by majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite sects in the past two decades.
