MUZAFFARBAD: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shiite Muslim mosque in the

capital of Pakistani-occupied Kashmir as the faithful commemorated Ashura today, police said.

The attack in Muzaffarabad came after Pakistan put tens of thousands of security forces on alert, fearing sectarian clashes and militant attacks as millions of Shiites marked the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.

“It was a suicide attack. The bomber was trying to enter inside the Imambargah mosque. Several people have been injured. I fear some people may be dead,” police official Yaseen Baig told AFP at the scene.

A severed leg and other body parts littered the ground outside the mosque where the electricity went off after the blast, said an AFP reporter.