Hundreds of Pakistanis called on Islamabad Monday to break off its alliance with the United States and get out of the war on Al-Qaeda as protests against a lethal NATO strike pushed into a third day.
Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers were killed in the cross-border attack early Saturday by NATO helicopters and fighter jets.
Members of civil society, lawyers, traders and students organised the rallies, still relatively small, in major cities of the nuclear-armed country of 167 million people, where opposition to the US alliance is rampant.
Lawyers 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, told AFP after one 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, several hundred Islamist students blocked a main road, chanting “Death to US” and “Quit the war on terror”, an AFP reporter saw.
Scores of tribesmen also gathered in Mohmand, the tribal district where the soldiers were killed, to protest against the attack and demand that the government change its pro-US policy, Khalid Khan, an administration official in the district told AFP.
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 Multan, Jamat-ud-Dawa, gathered a crowd of several hundred, burning an effigy of US President Barack Obama and US flags, an AFP photographer said.
In Kashmir, around 600 people in the town of Garhi Dupatta joined the relatives of a soldier killed in the attack, and chanted slogans against the US, police official Ishtiaq Gilani told AFP.
“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 told AFP from the protest.
It is for the political leaders of this country to train their nation in displaying their anger in a socially appropriate way.
Speaking truly and very honestly I am not entirety sure what is being achieved here by this group of 20 individuals.
NATO has killed 72 soldiers in different 'friendly engagements'. NATO supplies have been halted and it is also ordered to vacate an airbase. This is a very measured and a testing response, a shot right across their bow.
The burning of flags is an inappropriate way to express one's anger. Infact this is highly inappropriate way to demonstrate your displeasure.
Please think of an intelligent way of conveying your displeasure.
Yes we should , end the so called "War on terror". Instead we should think how can we rebuilt Pakistan. Due to this so called war we have lost so many prestigious human lives which no one can give a payback.
yes there is no any allaince in that condition
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