Hundreds of emotionally charged mourners have rampaged through the Pakistani capital, following funeral prayers for member of Parliament, Azam Tariq who was bumped off gunned down on Monday. Police gave chase to the angry mobs after they pelted cars with rocks, torched a cinema in the Melody market and set ablaze a Shia mosque in the Aabpara neighbourhood. An employee of the Melody cinema, identified as Ghafoor, was killed. He was sleeping inside when mobs set the cinema on fire. "He was brought to the hospital dead," said Dr Rashid Qurashi.
| "Kill the infidel cinema usher!" |
Another six people were being treated at the Polyclinic hospital for burns, smoke inhalation and cuts sustained when they tried to flee the blazing cinema. Smoke was billowing from a petrol station where crowds had set fire to jerry cans full of petrol, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
| "Yeeee-haw! Some funeral, ain't it Mahmoud?" |
At least a dozen vehicles were damaged near the cinema. "We will revenge your martyrdom, we will revenge your killing," mourners chanted earlier at the funeral prayers.
| "We will have Dire Revenge™! We must have Dire Revenge™!" |
Sunni leader Maulana Abd al-Hafeez Hazari led the funeral prayers, which were followed by fiery speeches and face-making and jumping up and down from fellow clerics close to Tariq. "Those who are behind this killing will not be spared," Maulana Masud al-Rahman Osmani told the crowd.
| "Bloooooood! Gooooore! Dire Revenge™!" |
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