Updated on
Summary Nationwide rallies and protests were held on Monday against NATO strikes.
The strikes had killed 24 soldiers on Saturday.On appeal of MQM, flag-hoisting ceremonies were organised in different cities to express solidarity with the Pak Army.MQM leaders Raza Haroon, Iftikhar Randhava and Wasim Akhtar hoisted national flags at the Multan Press Club.In Nawabshah, flag-march was held and the national flag was hoisted. An MQM delegation visited martyrs’ memorial in Rawalpindi.Different student bodies took out rallies in Sialkot to express solidarity with army in the wake of deadly NATO strikes.Industrialists, traders and students, in a rally, paid tribute to martyrs of Mohmand Agency.Lawyers also went on strike across the country, demonstrating outside court buildings, chanting slogans against NATO and the United States, officials from bar associations across the country said.We marched at the Islamabad High Court premises and expressed our anger against this attack, none of us went to the courts today, Ashraf Gujjar, president of Islamabad High Court Bar Association, said after the rally.The government should cut NATO supplies permanently, take back military bases from the US and plead that this cases violates the borders in the UN Security Council, he quoted from a resolution passed by lawyers.In Peshawar, the main city in northwest Pakistan, several hundred students blocked a main road, chanting Death to US and Quit the war on terror.Scores of tribesmen also gathered in Mohmand to protest against the attack and demand that the government change its pro-US policy.Some 200 lawyers blocked the national highway to the east of the financial capital Karachi, chanting slogans in the favour of Pakistani army, police said.In Pakistani-administered Kashmir, hundreds of people in the town of Garhi Dupatta joined the relatives of a soldier killed in the attack, and chanted slogans against the US.The government must retaliate and should suspend the relations with the US until there is a fair and free investigation, Zafar Iqbal, 25, the brother of fallen soldier Tahir Iqbal said.
