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India-Pakistan
Bangla boom kills two
2004-01-13
Two people have been killed and 27 others injured in a bomb attack at a crowded Muslim shrine in northeastern Bangladesh. A 14-year-old boy and an unidentified woman were killed instantly by the blast, which left a large crater in the ground. The blast sparked scenes of panic at the Hazrat Shah-Jalal shrine complex, which was packed with several thousand worshippers for a Muslim saint's festival.
Hmmm... Laughing, happy people, at the shrine of a Muslim saint... Guess the local Salafists just couldn't take it anymore.
Police said the "quite powerful" bomb was buried in soil near the complex. The shrine had been evacuated and officers were searching for more explosive devices, said a police source.
No arrests had been made and police did not known who may have planted the bomb or why.
If the victims were Sufis or maybe Shiites, we can guess who. If they were Ahmadiyyas, we're positive...
About a dozen people have died in unexplained explosions in the country in recent years. The large Hazrat Shah-Jalal shrine, in the Sylhet tea-growing district, is a well-known landmark in Bangladesh.
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#1  History of Hazrat Shah Jalal here. Also this on what may be the festival that got boomed:

Urush: This is the annual gathering of the Sufis and general people during the anninversary of Shah Jalal's death. Urush is also observered fob his deciples in many part of Sylhet. Thousands of Fakirs (transient men who live in jungles and shrines of Sufi saints), in red robes with iron sticks in their hands and colorful garlands in their necks, travels to Sylhet from all over Bangladesh. Some even travel from distant parts of India. These Fakirs closely resembles the original Hindu Sadhu-Sanyashis (hermits) who treaded this land for centuries. Many of them are for simple pleasures of Ganja (Marijauna), Hashish, etc, but nobody knows who is the real one. Strict Islamic clerics tried, though unsuccessfully, to stop these festivities, as Islam strongly forbids any saint worship or assigning divine power to any human.

Seems to be Sufi shrine, guess those strict clerics are trying again.
Posted by: Steve   2004-1-13 9:27:16 AM  

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