PESHAWAR
By Aamir Latif
A teenage student was killed and two others were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a school in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in the northwestern Pakistani town of Hangu on Monday, officials said.
The suicide bomber had reportedly tried to enter the public school in Ibrahimzai area, apparently planning to detonate his explosives inside the building. However, he was forced to set off his bombs prematurely after being spotted by security guards who were alerted by a student.
The blast occurred while students were leaving a school bus, city police chief Iftikhar Ahmed told reporters.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, however security forces point fingers at the hardline Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni militant group which has been blamed for several deadly attacks on Shiites in the recent past.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is considered a terrorist organization both by the US and Pakistan.
Located some 80 kilometers southwest of Peshawar, Hangu is the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which borders neighboring Afghanistan, and has been an epicenter of sectarian violence and militancy for the last decade.
The town is also adjacent to the troubled Orakzai tribal agency, where the Taliban and security forces have been at loggerheads for years.
Sectarian violence has had deep roots in this South Asian nuclear Muslim state, where hundreds of people have been killed and wounded in sectarian-related killings and bomb blasts during the last few years.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Sipah-e-Muhammad -- another Shiite group designated by Pakistan and the US as a terrorist organization -- have been involved in sectarian terrorism.
Shiite-Sunni tension began in Pakistan following the Shiite-dominated Islamic revolution in neighboring Iran.
Many believe that hardline Shiite and Sunni groups are being sponsored by Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively.
Pakistan is a Sunni majority country where Shiites make up 10 percent of the population of 180 million, and Sunnis constitute 85 percent.
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