News News Home Pak militants stoking sectarian rift: minister Reuters/Bdnews24.com . Islamabad Pro-Taliban Pakistani militants are trying to create a sectarian rift, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Saturday, as a new wave of violence piled pressure on a government already struggling with a flood crisis. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on two Shia rallies that killed 33 people in Lahore on Wednesday and 65 in the city of Quetta on Friday. The attacks ended a lull after devastating floods which affected 20 million people. Pakistani officials had said before the attacks that any major violence at such a difficult time was likely to cause deep popular resentment against the militants. On Friday, the Taliban also threatened to launch attacks in the United States and Europe ‘very soon,’ two days after the Washington added the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan to its list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations.’ Malik said al-Qaeda linked militants were trying to whip up sectarianism after taking a beating in their strongholds in the country’s northwest in a string of military offensives. ‘Sectarianism that has been there for 62 years (since the creation of Pakistan), they stoked it again,’ he told reporters in Islamabad. Warning that militants would launch attacks again ‘wherever there is a vulnerable situation’ he said ‘they are using it as a weapon to terrorise people.’ Thousands have been killed in sectarian violence by majority Sunni and minority Shia sects in the past two decades. But Shia violence has largely declined in recent years. ‘These militant groups think they can create conflict through sectarianism. But that has not happened,’ said political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi. He saw little hope, however, that popular resentment against the militants could undermine them, as happened in Iraq where people turned against al Qaeda over its violent methods. ‘They are not looking for support,’ he said. ‘They want to destabilize the situation. That is their only consideration.’ Malik said the TTP, al-Qaeda and the Sunni Muslim Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, one of the most violent anti-Shia groups with roots in the central Punjab province, were all part of the same organization. ‘Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, al-Qaeda, TTP; they are one,’ he said. ‘And the TTP are there whenever there is suicide bombing.’ Aside from its battles against Pakistani militants, Pakistan is under US pressure to tackle Afghan Taliban fighters who cross the border from Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas to attack US-led NATO troops.