PAKISTAN: Pakistanis protest over madrasa strike in tribal region that killed 80

While thousands of Pakistani tribesmen protested on Friday (November 3) vowing vengeance for an army airstrike on an al-Qaeda-linked religious school that killed around 80 suspected militants four days earlier, opposition parties demonstrated in various cities of Pakistan. Around 1000 people attended the post Friday prayer protest rally in Peshawar where leader of six party religious alliance, MMA, Maulana Fazlur Rehman threatened to continue jihad or holy war till the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Addressing the charged crowd, Rehman warned the United States that it would have to reap what it had sowed in Afghanistan. "Allah is Greatest," chanted the crowd. "Death to America." Rehman said it would be better for Musharraf to "learn a lesson from NATO forces in Afghanistan" and realize that the issue with the tribals could only be resolved through talks and 'jirga' (tribal elders' council) and not through show of force. In the central city of Lahore, some 8,000 members of Jamaat-u-Dawa, an Islamist charity that the United States says is a terrorist, held prayers for the airstrike's victims, while Islamist parties sympathetic to the Taliban demonstrated in the streets of the historic city. A protest in capital Islamabad only drew about 100 people. A mountainous region that is difficult to access, Bajaur lies across from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, where U.S. troops are hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Along with North and South Waziristan, Bajaur is regarded as a hotbed of support for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

ITN Source | November 3, 2006

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