HUM strongly condemns the cowardly attack on the inbound passenger bus of pilgrims in Akhtarabad Quetta.

The targeted passenger bus in flames.

The relentless attacks on the Shias and other minorities in parts of Pakistan demand decisive measures against the Islamic extremists across the country. Pakistan is apparently in the grip of ethno-religious attacks by affiliates of Al-Qaeda such as Lashker-e-Ghangvi, Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the recently sprouting Jaish-e-Islam which have escalated their terrorist activities against the Shias, the Hindus, the Christians, the Ahmedis, the Hazaras and the other Sunni sects to plunge the country into a civil war. As their flawed interpretation of Islamic injunctions and teachings have furthered been exposed in the last decade through out the world, they are making hectic efforts to fan sectarian violence in the country to appease their masters. However, the citizens of Pakistan have demonstrated great length of patience and maturity to foil all such ignoble attempts.

The January 1 attack on the inbound passenger bus of pilgrims, en route from Pakistan’s Taftan region to Quetta; with explosive-laden vehicle near Akhtarabad area of Quetta, which killed 2 innocent people and injured 30 others; signals the severity of the situation. The repetitive attacks on innocent civilians in areas of Sariab Road and Akhtarabad in the last five years authenticate that the Islamic terrorists have established their strongholds in these localities. These are, otherwise, predominantly Baloch-dominated areas which have harboured and cherished Islamic terrorists to facilitate their attacks on innocent people. This remains a terrible fact that that the terrorists living among the local population in these areas cannot do so without keen support and sympathies of the locals.

This is a great shame on part of the successive democratic governments of Pakistan to avoid taking concrete action against a handful of Islamic terrorists which has further emboldened them to make shallow attempts of infiltrating the Hazara-populated area of Alamdar Road in case of fruit products, wrapped in colourful pages of Persian poet Hafiz Sherazi, imported from  a neighbouring country. The benighted turban-clad religious extremists who chanted inflammatory slogans, entered Alamdar Road to provoke the local inhabitants for a hostile confrontation, are aware of the fact that Alamdar Road does not border any neighbouring country nor the imported commodities were transported from the area.

In recent months, the newly-elected Balochistan provincial government made boastful claims of recovering thousands of tons of explosives and its accessories from outskirts of Quetta and demolishing a bomb-making factory in Chaman (near Afghanistan border) in a raid, however, such purported claims cannot be corroborated  in view of the non-arrest of the culprits and the lack of interest in weeding out religious extremism from the Province.

The negligence and apathy of the federal and Balochistan’s provincial governments will further lead the country towards anxiety, chaos and mayhem resulting in country-wide communal cum religious clashes which, if erupted, will char everything.