Summary The community vowed to continue sit-in until the authorities take action against the extremists.
QUETTA (Dunya Web) - Thousands of Pakistani Shiites refused for a third day Tuesday to bury victims of a devastating bomb attack on their community, demanding protection against record levels of sectarian violence.
Demonstrators poured onto the streets across the country, shutting down the largest city Karachi and closing the road from the capital to Islamabad airport, in angry protest at Saturday s bombing that killed at least 90 people in Quetta.
Thousands of mostly women, but also men and children, blocked a road in the southwestern city, vowing to continue their sit-in until the authorities take action against the extremists behind the attack which also wounded more than 200 people.
Two girls aged seven and nine were among the dead after the bomb, nearly a tonne of explosives hidden in a water tanker, tore through a crowded market in a neighbourhood dominated by ethnic Hazara Shiite Muslims.
On Monday, the home secretary of southwestern Baluchistan province, Akbar Hussain Durrani said the death toll from Saturday s bomb had risen to 89, including 33 Afghans, with 204 other people wounded.
"We have certain clues about terrorists involved in past attacks and targeted killings which I cannot disclose at the moment but we are working on them," Durrani told a news conference.
Last month suicide bombers killed 92 people at a snooker hall in another Hazara neighbourhood of Quetta. Protesters are furious at the authorities failure to tackle rising attacks on Shiites.
