KHUZDAR: Survivors of a massive suicide attack on a shrine in Balochistan that killed scores spoke of their horror on Sunday after families were ripped apart in a strike showing the expanding reach of the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

The blast, said to be the work of a teenage suicide bomber, hit male and female devotees as they were performing dhamaal and chanting at the shrine of Shah Noorani on Saturday, some 750km south of Quetta.

Mohammad Shehzad, a 25-year-old who had travelled to the shrine in a group of 120 pilgrims, said: `The pressure of the blast was so strong, people were blown away. Everyone was running, shouting and searching for families.

`Children were looking for the mothers and fathers. People [were] looking for brothers and sisters but no one was able to listen to their cries.

The attack killed 54 people and wounded 103 others and was the fourthdeadliest in the country this year.

Stricken survivors swathed themselves in blankets and braved the cold under the open skies overnight as they made their way home.

Many had travelled hundreds of kilometres to pay their respects to the saintin line with their belief in sufism, which is viewed as heretical by militant groups.

Witnesses said that problems caused by the terrorist attack were compounded by the fact that it took several hours for rescue services to reach the remote shrine, located on a hilltop in Khuzdar district several kilometres away from surrounding villages, with poor mobile network coverage.Hafeez Ali, a 28-year-old automechanic, said: `We had left the area only five minutes before the attack to go and cook our dinner. From our viewpoint on a hill, we could see three whirling dervishes dancing to a drummer, as hundreds formed a circle around them.

Then came the explosion.

`We realised that it was a bomb blast.

Two of us rushed down and saw the bodies scattered all around mostly children. We also saw the drumbeater dead andhisexploded drumwaslyingnearby.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti said the blast was carried out by a teenage suicide bomber. `We have found body parts of the bomber which place his age at around 16 to 18,` he said.

The announcement lent credence to a claim of responsibility by IS, which released a photo overnight of the purportedattacker-a dark-skinnedyouth dressed in white tunic with a green backpack-viaitsaffiliated Amaq news agency.

It was the second major assault claimed by the Middle-East based outfit in as many months, following a raid on a police training college near Quetta that killed 61 people. Militant sources in the province have told AFP that IS, which had earlier struggled to gain a foothold in Pakistan because of competition from already established groups, has nowforged alliances with local affiliates, including the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group.

Pakistan has been battling Islamist militancy since shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 forced the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee across the border.

Overall levels of violence have dropped in recent years following major military operations in tribal areas mainly targeting the Pakistani Taliban, but it now appears that newthreats are emerging.

Amir Rana, an expert on militancy, said: `It seems that IS has found an ally in Pakistan, which is probably the Al Alami faction [of] Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.

`The group is organising the scattered factions of sectarian outfits and Taliban factions, across the country,but it is much more organised in Balochistan and Sindh.

Saturday`s attack was also the deadliest on a shrine in the country`s history.

The previous worst attack came in April 2011 when 50 people were killed in a double suicide blast outside the shrine of Ahmed Sultan in Dera Ghazi Khan.-AFP