QUETTA, Feb 20,2013

Members of the Hazara community and relatives of Kirani road suicide blast victims buried all 90 dead bodies amid tears and sorrows in Hazara Town graveyard Quetta.
Hundreds of people‚ including women and children attended last rituals of the victims.
“All dead bodies have been buried”, Syed Dawood Agha, the President Balochistan Shia Conference said. Emotional movements were witnessed during the burial as the relatives broke into tears while burying their loved ones.
Hazara community staged four days tiresome sit-in in protest over killings in a suicide blast on February 16 in Kirani road area of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. Women and children spent chilly nights in open sky to mourn the killings and force the authorities to launch targeted operation in Quetta.
Earlier‚ the aggrieved protesters at Hazara Town graveyard started aerial firing during the burial process; as a result of stampede two persons were injured.
Angry mob pelted stones and opened fire at the vehicle of Deputy Commissioner (DC) Quetta, Mansoor Kakar.
“The DC narrowly escaped the firing”, Fayyaz Sumbal, the Deputy Inspector General Police Quetta said.
Frontier Corps and police personnel quickly retaliated and their aerial firing dispersed the enraged protesters.
Security forces cordoned off the graveyard and controlled the situation by quickly retaliating and firing aerial shots to disperse the enraged protesters.
Meanwhile, most of the sit-ins staged in major cities of the country in solidarity with the victims were called off.

ISLAMABAD: During Thursday’s hearing of the suo motu notice taken of unabated killings of the Hazara community, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry remarked that intelligence was supposed to be shared with law-enforcement agencies and not with the court, DawnNews reported.

A three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar was hearing the case.

During the proceedings, the chief justice moreover inquired as to what was the assurance that such incidents would not occur in the future.

Nasir Ali Shah, a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) MNA from Balochistan, told the court that some 1,500 people had been killed between 2002 and 2013.

Shah added that members of the Hazara community had buried their dead but were fearful of more attacks.

The hearing was adjourned to 11:30 am due to the absence of certain officials who had been summoned to appear before the bench.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had claimed before the bench that it had forewarned of the carnage in which over 87 innocent Shia Hazaras lost their lives in Quetta.

“A huge consignment of explosives was being transported,” the ISI had stated in a report submitted to the bench.

Read out by Director Legal of the Ministry of Defence Commander Shahbaz, the ISI report had said that despite being in a crude form, the information had been passed on (to the provincial government) about an imminent bomb blast. It said the terrorists had taken advantage of water scarcity in Hazara Town and sent a tanker loaded with 800-1,000 kilograms of explosives.

Operation against Lashkar-i-Jhangvi

On Wednesday, the federal government had announced that the operation launched against the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) would continue until the arrest of its entire leadership.

Briefing reporters after a meting of the federal cabinet, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira had stated that all law-enforcement agencies were participating in the operation which had led to the killing of four LJ members and arrest of 170 people allegedly involved in carrying out attacks on Hazara Shias.

“We assure everybody in the country that the government will take the ongoing operation to its logical conclusion.”