4.7.10

Somewhere in Pakistan....


The Taliban may have overplayed their hand by attacking Lahore’s Data Gunj Baksh shrine on Thursday night, killing 44 people. For the first time since the near-daily suicide attacks across Pakistan began, thousands of people, including conservative religious groups, took to streets nationwide on Saturday to denounce the terror group and demand a new offensive against them. Shops and businesses were shuttered in all major cities to protest the suicide bombings and the second major attack on Pakistan’s cultural hub, Lahore in a month. A mob of baton-wielding protesters forced others to join the protest and close their shops at a major market area in Lahore. Police detained around 10 protesters after they smashed windows of parked cars. No one was hurt. Protests also erupted in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Faislabad, Hyderabad and the northwestern Pashtun-dominated town of Peshawar. “We want the government to immediately bring perpetrators of this crime to task. We will not end our protest until culprits are punished,’’ said Sunni Muslim Council leader Raghib Naeemi. The council was one of the groups which had called for the strike of all big markets in Karachi. Naeemi urged the government to step up its efforts against extremism. The council’s chief Sahibzada Fazal thanked Pakistanis for holding protests. “Today’s successful strike shows that people behind terrorist acts. People have rejected these hired assassins.’’ Authorities also ordered a crackdown on suspects. Police said they had rounded up several suspected militants around Lahore and recovered 20 suicide vests, police uniforms and large amounts of ammunition on Friday night. Pakistan PM Yousaf Raza Gilani visited the scene and vowed to bring the attackers to justice. “We’ve to be united to defeat terrorism and have appealed to the international community to help us,’’ he said. This was a rare visit of Pakistan’s head of government, who hails from a Sufi family, to a terror attack scene. The attack on the shrine has also intensified calls for reigning in extremist seminaries that mushroomed across Pakistan during the US-backed jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The US pumped in huge money to hire fighters from these seminaries for its war against the Soviet-occupation of Afghanistan.

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