I don't know how true following account is, someone from the area can confirm
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In spite of being aware of the actual eye witness accounts, I have kept silent because what I know about the incident could have further inflamed the emotions here. But no one can be allowed to post such blatant lies and try to give another angle to the whole tragic episode. So I'll try to write what I know about the tragedy without going into the gory details.
Madrassa Taleem ul Quraan is one of the most important sunni seminaries in Rawalpindi. Its mosque is right in Raja Bazar and Juma prayers always spill over to the road in front of it. Yesterday also, the rows for prayers had extended to the road. It is a double road and there were prayer rows on one side of the road which were being guarded by a few police men. The ashoura procession was passing on the other side of the road. Suddenly, a large wave of the procession came and overwhelming the police spilled over to the side of the road where Juma prayers were being offered. Namazis got infuriated on this and asked the mourners to confine themselves to one side of the road. Heated arguments started and it soon got off the hand. Mourners started beating up namazis on the road while namazis inside the mosque started throwing stones on mourners below.
The whole incident had absolutely nothing to do with anything being said from the mosque. Now instead of sending large number of riot police to diffuse the situation, only one platoon of elite police was sent to the affected place. This platoon had no orders to shoot or even shoot in air and being elite force, had no training in crowd control. Participants of procession soon overpowered the elite force jawans who decided not to shoot back. In total 17 rifles were taken from these elite force personnel ans used to fire at the mosque.
Having a great advantage in numbers, the mourners in ashoura procession soon overcame the resistance in the mosque. After that they entered the mosque, killed several people (in a horrible un-human way) including the imam masjid and several children. Then they burnt the mosque and several nearby buildings. While this barbarism was going on, some leaders of the procession tried to stop the mourners but the youth in the procession seemed to be totally out of control. They also stopped fire brigade vehicles from dousing the burning buildings for more than 3 hours thus making the fire spread to many adjoining buildings. Police was totally helpless in controlling the crowd.
News of this atrocity soon reached other parts of the city and sunni youth came out on the streets and started attacking shia imam bargahs. This is when the government decided to impose the curfew. The whole episode was barbaric beyond words. I consider the perpetrators neither shia nor Muslim, but pure animals. If curfew had not been imposed similar atrocities would have happened against shias given how the emotions of sunnis had been inflamed after what had happened.
I do hope that situation calms down but things will never ge the same in Rawalpindi which had never seen any shia-sunni riots ever before.
In spite of being aware of the actual eye witness account... - justpaste.it
