QUETTA: Victims of the Mastung suicide attack Friday buried the victims of a recent bomb attack after ending a protest following government assurances that the perpetrators would be hunted down.
Relatives had refused to bury the dead from a roadside blast earlier this week that killed 24 Shia pilgrims on a bus in Mastung around 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Quetta.
They ended their two-day protest late on Thursday after a government delegation led by Interior Minister Chaudrhy Nisar Ali Khan assured them an operation would be carried out against those responsible.
The government paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC), began an operation in Mastung district, on Friday morning.
"Around 350 personnel of FC and police commandos are carrying out an operation in Mastung and its surrounding that started at 6am today," FC spokesman, Wasey Khan told AFP.
He said two helicopters were giving air cover to the personnel.
A senior FC official Colonel Muhammad Azam Khan later told reporters the security forces had detained at least 90 suspects, with 73 released after initial interrogations.
He added that "the remaining 17 suspects will be thoroughly interrogated and we hope to be able to trace out sanctuaries of terrorists as a result of our ongoing investigation".
Meanwhile, FC personnel escorted some 300 pilgrims from Taftan town, bordering Iran under strict security to Dalbandin town, senior FC official Colonel Abdul Rehman Arif told AFP.
He said these pilgrims had arrived in seven buses from Iran after the bomb attack, adding that two more buses carrying 100 pilgrims arrived today.
"We airlifted at least 150 pilgrims from Dalbandin to Quetta today while remaining ones will also be airlifted very soon," he added.
Members of Hazara community, began their protest on Wednesday and braved freezing temperatures to spend the night in the open.
Comments
Comments are closed.