-- Splinter group of TTP claims responsibility
Earlier, Sindh health minister Jam Mehtab Daher told AFP that "a total of 40 have been killed in the attack, 46 others have been wounded". Hundreds of people rushed to the scene after the blast to try to dig out survivors trapped under the roof of the imambargah, 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 Shia organisation, Rahat Kazmi, told AFP that up to 400 people were worshipping in the mosque when the blast struck.
RISING TIDE OF VIOLENCE Sainrakhio Mirani, police chief of the region told AFP officers were still working to determine whether it was a suicide bombing or whether the 6-7 kilogramme (13-15 pound) bomb was detonated remotely. It is the bloodiest single sectarian attack in country since March 2013, when a car bomb in a Shia neighbourhood of Karachi killed 45. A spokesman for the shadowy Jandullah militant group, a splinter faction of the Pakistani Taliban, said they were behind the blast. "We claim responsibility for attack on Shias in Shikarpur very happily," Ahmed Marwat told AFP.
Friday's attack came as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Karachi, to discuss the law and order situation in the city. A report by the US Institute of Peace this week warned that sectarian militant groups were growing in strength in rural areas of Sindh.