Source: BBC via Wasim Sr.
By Richard Galpin
Worshippers react nervously when they hear raised voices. The faithful line up to pray in a small Shia mosque hidden away down the dusty side-streets of Peshawar.But the central arch where the imam stands in front of his congregation is covered in blast marks and dark smears.The ornate blue tiles have been smashed.This is where a militant blew himself up just two weeks before.
“When I came inside, I saw severed legs, human organs and heads… all over the mosque,” says Syed Hussain Hussaini, whose nephew was among the 21 people killed.On the ceiling, walls and even on a building opposite, are pockmarks from hundreds of ball-bearings which had been packed inside the young man’s suicide belt.
Although today the congregation seems determined to set fear aside, tensions rise rapidly when a man with a pistol inside his clothing is stopped at the gate.A heated argument breaks out as the security guards try to remove the gun.But the man is not – as had been feared – another militant from the majority Sunni Muslim community trying to carry out a second sectarian attack.