Suicide bomber kills Pakistani cleric

KARACHI, July 14 (Reuters) A suicide bomber today killed a leading Pakistani Muslim Shi'ite cleric, Allama Hassan Turabi, in an attack in the volatile southern city of Karachi, provincial government officials said.

''Allama Turabi is dead,'' Salahuddin Haider, a spokesman for the Sindh government, said from the hospital ward where the mortally wounded cleric had been rushed.

A young nephew of the cleric and a bodyguard also died, along with the bomber, in the attack outside Turabi's house in a residential area of the city.

Television news channel ARYone showed pictures of a head lying by a wall. Suicide bombers' heads are often blown off by the upward force of explosives strapped to their body.

''We have found body parts of the bomber outside the allama's house,'' said Mushtaq Shah, a deputy inspector of police.

Turabi had survived an assassination attempt in Karachi in April, when his car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb.

Karachi has been the scene of bloody rivalry between Pakistan's majority Sunnis and minority Shi'ites since the 1980s.

REUTERS SK RN1917