QUETTA: Quetta mourners continued their sit-in with 89 of their dead, the media reported on Monday. The protesters refused to bury the dead until control was handed over to the army to protect them from such attacks.
Thousands of women refused today to bury victims of a bloody bombing and a strike shut down Karachi as protesters across the country demanded protection for Shia Muslims.
Up to 4,000 women began their sit-in in Quetta Sunday evening, a day after a bomb in the city killed 81 members of the community including nine women and two girls aged seven and nine.
The women blocked a road and refused to bury the dead until authorities take action against the extremists behind the attack, which wounded 178 people.
The bomb, containing nearly a tonne of explosives hidden in a water tanker, tore through a crowded market in Hazara Town, on Saturday evening.
It was the second deadly blast in the city in little over a month.
The sit-in continued Monday at Hazara Town and near a local station, said Wazir Khan Nasir, police chief of Quetta
"We are going to resume negotiations with the Shia community leaders this morning to convince them to bury the dead," Nasir told AFP.
However a local Shia party leader, Qayyum Changezi, said the protesters "will not bury the dead until a targeted operation is launched".
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the bomb blast and called on authorities to act quickly against those responsible.
Sit-in demonstrations were held in several cities and towns across the country demanding an end to the killing of Shias.
Public transport drivers and traders stopped work in Karachi Monday after a Shia party called a protest strike, residents said.
Schools were closed, traffic was off the roads and attendance in offices was thin in the city. Several political and religious parties have backed the strike call.
"We will continue our peaceful struggle for protection of the Shia community," said a Shia party leader, Hasan Zafar Naqvi.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2013
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2013
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