October 26, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 8, 1422

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 25: An activist of the Harkatul Mujahideen, which is fighting Indian forces in the held Kashmir, was buried in a southern village of Azad Kashmir on Thursday after his body was brought here from Afghanistan.

Twenty-five-year-old Yasir Qayyum was among at least 35 Harkatul Mujahideen activists, who were killed in the United States air strikes on Afghanistan, late on Tuesday.

Officials and residents said around 3,000 people had attended his funeral prayers held at the Sabir Shaheed Stadium in Rawalakot, some 112km south of the AJK capital.

A Rawalakot-based journalist told this correspondent that the body had been brought to the town at noon by two unidentified Harkat members in a procession, whose participants were chanting pro-Taliban and anti-US slogans.

Local cleric Mufti Abdul Khaliq, who led the procession, condemned Pakistan’s policy to support the US and called upon Islamabad to review it.

Later, Qayyum’s body was taken to his ancestral village, Mutial Mera, on the outskirts of Rawalakot, where his funeral prayers were offered again at a local mosque.