ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities stepped up security across the country on Wednesday as Shia mourners began annual Ashura processions to commemorate the death of Hazrat Imam Hussain.

 ‘Foolproof security arrangements have been completed to maintain law and order during Ashura,’ said Tanvir Ashraf Kaira, a minister in Punjab.

‘Police and other law enforcement agencies have been put on alert and army personnel have been deployed in sensitive districts,’ the minister told media.

‘Security has to be enhanced in view of the sensitivity of sects’ during Muharram, he said.

Authorities placed the town of Hangu under curfew in a bid to avert violence, two days after a suicide bomber killed seven people in a nearby town, officials said.

They said police commandos would be deployed along routes used by marchers in NWFP.

In Lahore, a major procession was to begin later on Wednesday, culminating at a major mosque late Thursday.

A similar procession will begin in Islamabad late Wednesday, joining a big gathering of Shia mourners in Rawalpindi.