PESHAWAR: Thousands of people took to the streets in various cities of country on Friday, AFP correspondents said, a day after sectarian attacks in the northwest killed 43 people, including women and children.
Gunmen opened fire Thursday on two separate convoys of Shias travelling with police escorts in Kurram, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghanistan border with a history of bloody sectarian violence.
Several hundred people demonstrated in Lahore, an AFP photographer there saw.
“We are tired of counting the bodies. How long will this bloodshed continue?” Khanum Nida Jafri, a 50-year-old religious scholar protesting, told AFP.
“Do our officials not consider Shias as part of their own population? When will they wake up?” he said. “We are demanding peace for our children and women. Are we asking too much?”
Hundreds also demonstrated in commercial hub Karachi.
In Parachinar, the main town of Kurram district, thousands participated in a sit-in, while hundreds attended the funerals of the victims, mainly Shia civilians, resident Muhammad Ali told AFP. “Following the funerals, the youth gathered, chanted slogans against the government, and marched toward a nearby security checkpoint,” Ali said.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that “some broke CCTV cameras at the checkpoint... burned tyres and caused damage to property”, before the situation de-escalated.
Mobile signal across the district was shut down for several hours, according to the official.
“A curfew has been imposed on the main road connecting Upper and Lower Kurram, and the bazaar remained completely closed, with all traffic suspended,” he said.
Thursday’s attacks also left 16 people wounded, 11 of whom were in critical condition, senior administrator Javed Ullah Mehsud told AFP.
Mehsud said that a local jirga, or tribal council, has been convened to help restore peace and order.
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