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Police On Alert For Eid Violence In Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, March 6 (News Agencies) - More than 50,000 police fanned out across Pakistan on Tuesday to prevent feared sectarian violence at the start of the three-day Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, police said.
"We have deployed over 50,000 armed policemen to guard sensitive areas, mosques and key installations to ensure peace," Punjab provincial Police Inspector General Asif Hyat said.
It will be a tense three-day Eid holiday after a string of bloody clashes and attacks between majority Sunnis and minority Shiites which have claimed more than two dozen lives in the past few weeks, police said.
No major incidents were reported Tuesday as police and paramilitary troops watched over Eid services at mosques and prayer grounds throughout the country.
"All law-enforcing agencies have been put on high alert and we will sternly deal with those trying to disturb peace. Islam does not allow such grisly acts," Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said after Eid prayers in Islamabad.
Last week's hanging of Sunni activist Haq Nawaz for the 1990 murder of an Iranian diplomat led to vehement calls for revenge against the Shiite community.
Nawaz was the first Sunni activist executed in Pakistan despite a decade of religious strife that has claimed more than 3,000 lives.
Two people died in a gun battle between police and Sunni activists in Punjab ahead of Nawaz's funeral last Wednesday and 14 people were killed in sectarian clashes the following day in a northwestern town.
In the Punjab city of Sheikhupura where Sunni activists gunned down 12 people on Sunday, resident Nasir Sakhawat said "the violence has stolen the merriness of the occasion."
Military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, in an Eid address, called for "unity" in the face of unspecified "enemies."
"We as a nation have to pledge today that we will remain united for the stability, defense and solidarity of the country," he was quoted as saying in the state-run press agency.
Funerals for the victims of Sunday's attacks - five Sunnis, four Shiites and two policemen - were held amid tight security in Sheikhupura on Monday.
"The execution of a terrorist may have prompted violence from across the country but we are determined to establish the writ of the state against sectarian terrorists," an interior ministry spokesman said.
Lahore Police Deputy Inspector General Javed Noor said Abdul Haq, a wanted "terrorist" and activist with underground Sunni group Lashkar-e Jhangvi, had been arrested.
"We are searching for the other four terrorists and are hopeful of breaking the terrorists' network," Noor said.
Allama Sajid Naqvi, chief of the Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan Shiite party, said the latest wave of violence following Nawaz's execution "poses a very serious threat to peace in the society."
Nawaz was a member of Sunni group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the parent organization of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which has been officially declared a terrorist outfit.
Lashkar chief Riaz Basra is the most wanted man in Pakistan and has a bounty of five million rupees ($82,000) on his head.
He had also been sentenced to death for his role in the killing of the Iranian diplomat, but escaped from custody and is now believed to be hiding in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan has repeatedly asked the ruling Taliban Islamic militia in Afghanistan to extradite some 60 sectarian "terrorists."
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