HANGU/KOHAT, Jan 31: Four people were killed and 16 others, including a woman, suffered injuries in two days of sectarian violence in southern Hangu district, police said.

Two people were killed and 14 were wounded on Tuesday when two mortar shells hit an imambargah in Hangu city. The dead were later identified as Afghan refugees.

Two more people were killed on Wednesday when a mourners’ procession came under fire in the city, which has been under curfew since Tuesday following the mortar attack.

The violence in Hangu, where 40 people died in a suicide blast last Ashura, came in the wake of suicide bombings in Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan and a rocket attack on an imambargah in Bannu.

Residents said that army and paramilitary forces fired on suspected locations of the assailants. Two helicopter gunships also kept hovering over the area, they said.

They said that a large number of mourners had assembled in the imambargah near Patt bazaar, urging the district administration to allow them to take out a procession. The administration asked the elders to confine their procession within the imambargah premises. After hours of negotiations, the administration allowed the mourners to take out the procession.

Witnesses said that the attack took place when the mourners were dispersing after marching on the city streets. The fire came from an unidentified location, they said, adding that one person died on the spot.

Syed Hussain Ali Shah, an elder of the Shia sect, alleged that the procession had been targeted from Sungair Kalli. Maulana Abdullah, representing the Sunni sect, denounced the attacks.

With curfew remaining in force, the security forces took positions on the hilltops overlooking Hangu city to avert any further incident.

Officials said that Tuesday’s mortar attack on the imambargah in Pass Kalli area left two Afghans dead and 14 other people, including 12 policemen, wounded.

Witnesses said that one mortar shell fell on the roof of the imambargah and another landed in front of the main gate of the building.

Tension gripped areas adjacent to Kohat district when hundreds of mourners from Sherkot and other parts of Kohat, who had decided to take part in the main procession in Hangu, were stopped from entering the troubled city.

The mourners marched towards Hangu on Wednesday in protest against the ban on taking out processions in Hangu imposed by the army, but they were stopped near Raisan, a border town between the two cities. The administration held talks with the mourners who returned peacefully to their villages.

Irfan Mughal adds from Dera Ismail Khan: Police arrested 14 people from a city hotel on Wednesday, officials said.

They said that acting on information about the presence of some suspects in the hotel, the police encircled the building and made the arrests. All the detainees belonged to the South Waziristan agency.

And in Bannu, police seized anti-tank mines and hand-grenades from a rickshaw on Tuesday and arrested four people, our correspondent adds.

Sources said that a cleric, Maulana Abdul Satar Shah Bukhari, was arrested on charges of involvement in a rocket attack on an imambargah in Hussainabad.