Quetta, July 10: The interior minister of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province resigned today a week after a terrorist mosque attack that killed 48 people in the provincial capital Quetta. Sanaullah Zehri told reporters his resignation had been accepted by the provincial governor. He also said he bore no responsibility for the incident, targeted at minority Shiite Muslims, which left more than 50 people injured.

"I am not responsible in any way for the killings of Shiites as I was a powerless minister and was deliberately kept ignorant on security matters," he said.
"It was a serious a security lapse and action should have been taken against the provincial police chief," he said.
Three men, two of them suicide bombers, raided the Shiite Muslim mosque in Quetta city during Friday prayers in one of the worst attacks in the country's history.


The deaths added to the thousands of people who have been killed since the late 1980s in violence against the Shiites blamed on militants from the dominant Sunni community.

Zehri heads his own political group called the Baluchistan National Democratic Party, which has only one seat in the 65-member provincial assembly.

He became minister when a coalition government of Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali's Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) was set up in November last year.
Bureau Report