Five killed, 51 wounded in sectarian fighting

Описание: (9 Feb 2006)
1. Car ablaze
2. Car being hosed down, people throwing rocks
3. Various of plume of smoke rising
4. Various of crowds with banner and sticks
5. Crowd outside building, zoom in to them banging on door
6. Crowd running
7. Women running along footpath
8. Various of body in street
9. Car with door open
STORYLINE:
Hundreds of Shiite Muslims and Sunnis clashed in the western Afghan city of Herat on Thursday during the Shiite Ashoura festival, exchanging fire, hurling grenades and burning mosques, officials said.
At least five people were killed and 51 injured, a doctor said.
Islamic extremists were suspected to have incited the violence, said Ismatullah Mohammed, a senior police officer.
The fighting followed three days of rioting across Afghanistan over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in a Danish newspaper.
Those riots left 11 dead.
Thursday's fighting started after 300 Sunnis threw stones at a Shiite mosque during the sect's most important festival, Ashoura, Mohammed said.
Such an attack is rare in Afghanistan, where there has been little tension between the two sects.
The Shiites responded, attacking Sunnis in a camp for displaced people, before the violence spread across the city with both sides throwing grenades at each other, burning about a dozen cars and two mosques, he said.
Police fired into the air to try to separate the two sides, but failed, said local resident Abdul Nafai.
Mohammed said hundreds of young men were believed to be coming into Herat from surrounding towns and villages to join the fighting and security forces have been ordered to block roads.
Thousands of other soldiers and police fanned out across the city, said the deputy army commander in Herat, Faizil Ahmad Sayar.
Sunnis make up about 80 per cent of Afghanistan's 28 (m) million population, Shiites 20 per cent.
Apart from a small clash in the capital Kabul during Ashoura last year, there has been little fighting between the two sects.
Taliban rebels, who are Sunnis, have directed their campaign of violence at the country's US-backed government and foreign forces, and not the
Shiites.
The rebels stepped up their attacks last year, using suicide bombings as a common tactic for the first time, and leaving about 1,600 people dead, the most since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.
Clashes between Sunnis and Shiites are common in Iraq and police suspicions that extremists may be behind Thursday's violence in Herat may
reinforce fears that al-Qaida militants, some from Iraq, are stoking the fighting here.

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