Members of Pakistan’sĀ Hazara people have launched a sit-in and public hunger strike after a massacre targeted theĀ Shi’iteĀ minority at a coal-field in a remote area ofĀ Balochistan provinceĀ on Jan. 3. Hundreds have been blocking a major thoroughfare through the provincial capital,Ā Quetta. Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid was sent in to meet with a delegation of the Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM), theĀ organization leading the sit-in, but his offer of compensation to victims’Ā familiesĀ was rebuffed as insufficient.Ā In the attack, armed men rounded up miners from worker housing at theĀ MachhĀ coal-field in mountainousĀ Bolan district. Those determined to be Hazara, 11 in all, were marched into the hills and summarily shot. Many had their throats slit or were otherwise mutilated. The local franchise of the “Islamic State” claimed responsibility for the massacre. Families of the victims are refusingĀ to bury their loved ones, but have brought the bodies to the site of the sit-in,Ā demanding the Balochistan government either arrest the killers or resign. (IANS, ANI, Dawn, Al Jazeera)
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ISIS claims Peshawar mosque massacre
A suicide attack inside a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar killed more than 50 people and wounded dozens more March 5. The Islamic State’s regional affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, claimed responsibility, (Al Jazeera, NYT, NDTV)