PESHAWAR, Feb 28: Tehrik Nifaz Fiqah-i-Jaffaria has asked the NWFP government to hold an impartial inquiry into the killing of innocent people and ransacking of shops on the 10th of Muharram in Hangu and award exemplary punishment to the killers.

Speaking at a news conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday, Dr Iqbal Javed Haideri denied that it was a sectarian killing as dubbed by some quarters. He said both the Shias and Sunnis had been living peacefully side by side in Hangu and Tank for decades and they were opposed to sectarian strife and killings. He alleged that the Hangu incident was a handiwork of agents of imperialism who wanted to divide the Ummah on sectarian lines.

He observed that the anti-Muslim forces had put up the Muslim sects against each other in many Muslim countries in order to hide crimes being committed against the Muslims irrespective of their being Shia or Sunni.

After the publication of sacrilegious cartoons in newspapers of Denmark, Norway, Poland and France, the US occupation forces dropped bombs on the mausoleums of Imam Hassan Askarai and Imam Ali Al-Hadi, rocketed the mausoleum of Hazrat Salman Farsi, a companion of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Iraq and blasted a bomb in Karbala to terrorise the Muslims, he claimed.

He alleged that the US media were dubbing the recent atrocities of the US-led allied forces as Shia-Sunni sectarian dispute. He denied the existence of any Shia-Sunni dispute in the war-torn Iraq and said it all was a US propaganda to mislead the world opinion. He said the US imperialism was trying to pit both the sects against each other, but the popular leadership in Iraq would foil the ugly American plan.

From Iraq to Pakistan, he observed, the US and its anti-Muslim allies were active behind every gory event. He said now it had become imperative for the Muslim to get themselves united against the imperialist forces. The TNFJ would observe mourning against the demolition of mausoleums of pious Imams till March 9, he added.

The TNFJ provincial chief criticised the federal minister for religious affairs for arranging a meeting between Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and a delegation of so-called representatives of the Shia community. He said the TNFJ was the sole representative of the Shia community.

He demanded of the NWFP government to pay compensation to the relatives of the victims of the tragic Hangu incident forthwith.