Pakistani security officials and police examine the scene following a bomb attack at a mosque in Shikarpur, Pakistan. (Agence France-Presse)
A powerful bomb tore through a busy mosque in southern Pakistan today, killing more than 60 people in the country's deadliest sectarian attack in nearly two years.
The blast hit the mosque in Shikarpur in Sindh province, around 470 kilometres north of Karachi, as hundreds of worshipers attended Friday prayers.
Sindh Health Minister Jam Mehtab Daher told AFP that "the death toll from the attack has increased to 61".
"There are 54 dead bodies in Shikarpur hospital. Seven others died in Sukkur and Larkana hospitals," he said.
Shaukat Ali Memon, the medical superintendent of Civil Hospital in Shikarpur, earlier gave a death toll of 48.
Hundreds of people rushed to the scene after the blast to try to dig out survivors trapped under the roof of the mosque, which collapsed in the explosion, witness Zahid Noon said.
Television footage of the aftermath showed chaotic rescue scenes as people piled the wounded into cars, motorbikes and rickshaws to take them for treatment.
"The area is scattered with blood and flesh and it smells of burnt meat, people are screaming at each other... it is chaos," Noon told AFP.
"A huge contingent of police and rangers is present here and ambulances from the nearby towns have started to arrive."
Local resident Mohammad Jehangir told AFP he had "felt the earth move beneath my feet" as he prayed at another mosque around 1.5 kilometres away.
An official with a national Shiite organisation, Rahat Kazmi, told AFP that up to 400 people were worshiping in the mosque when the blast struck.