Kuwait Times

Published Date: August 18, 2008

KARACHI: Thousands of people rallied in Karachi yesterday, burning a US flag and an effigy of President George W. Bush to protest the arrest of a Pakistani woman by US authorities in Afghanistan.

The call for the rally was given by Jamaat-e-Islami, the main Islamic religious party of Pakistan, to demand the release of scientist Aafia Siddiqui, charged with trying to murder US officials in Afghanistan.

Siddiqui, 36, a mother-of-three who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was arrested on July 17 in Afghanistan, extradited to New York on August 4 and indicted the next day on a charge of attempted murder.

The protesters burnt a US flag and an effigy of Bush, chanting "Free Aafia Siddiqui," "Death to America" and "Death to Bush.

Police official Salman Syed told AFP that about 4,000 people attended the rally, while organisers claimed three times that number were present.

The US should immediately release Dr Aafia Siddiqui. God knows how many of our daughters like Aafia Siddiqui are languishing in US jails," Mohammad Hussain Mehanti, chief of Jammat-e-Islami, Karachi chapter, told protesters.

Siddiqui was wounded during an alleged shootout with FBI agents and US military officers when she was questioned in Afghanistan. A US court put her in medical care. She was on a 2004 US list of suspects linked to Al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, almost 200 people have died in nearly two weeks of fierce sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in a remote Pakistani tribal region, officials said yesterday.

The toll rose after 23 people were killed in fresh fighting overnight in the Kurram tribal region bordering Afghanistan, which has historically experienced tensions between the two sides, they said.

Local newspapers said that Taliban militants from the neighbouring North Waziristan tribal zone had entered Kurram to back the Sunni tribes involved in the fighting, now in its 12th day.

Residents said Sunni tribesmen torched three villages belonging to Shiite tribes and both sides used rockets, heavy machine guns and mortars in the fierce clashes.

In today's and yesterday's clashes at least 23 people have been killed on both sides and 28 others were injured," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

According to reports gathered through local intelligence officials and hospitals, the overall death toll from the days of fighting has risen to 194, with 286 others injured, the official said.

The government earlier this week warned the tribes to end the fighting or face military action.

Local administration officials said that elders from both tribes have been approached to restore peace in the area and local residents are also supporting the initiative.

The lawless tribal district was rocked by bloody sectarian clashes in April in which some 50 people were killed.

Shiites account for about 20 percent of Pakistan's Sunni-dominated population, but are in the majority in Parachinar, the main town in Kurram. Sectarian violence involving militants from Sunni and Shiite sects has claimed more than 4,000 lives in Pakistan since the late 1980s. - AFP