KARACHI, July 12: The Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) on Wednesday condemned the series of bomb blasts in Mumbai on Tuesday which left about 200 people dead many more injured.

In a statement issued here on Wednesday, it called upon the governments of India and Pakistan to reassess their priorities and be in a state of high alert. It said that as long as they failed to resolve their mostly man-made disputes and allowed free and unfettered people-to-people interaction, extremists and terrorists would find it easy strike them.

Describing the terrorist attack as ‘massacre’, the PPC noted that the terrorists had targeted thousands of people returning home from their workplaces.

What has happened in Mumbai is indicative of a widening of the dimensions of terrorists’ outreach, it viewed, and called for united efforts by not only governments of India and Pakistan, but the people at large to identify and wipe out this ‘cancer’ that was spreading far and wide at a frightening pace.The PPC said Pakistan ought to take stern measures to put down all kinds of demonstrations and displays of religious extremism in the country, which directly or indirectly encouraged terrorist activities in the name of religion and undermined the peace process between the two neighbouring countries. Similarly, India should curb the activities of religious fanatics using the umbrella of India’s pluralist democratic political system to spawn communal conflicts and derail the peace process, the PPC emphasised.

In order to avert a possible collapse of the peace process as a result of such tragic incidents, it is necessary that the two governments put their heads together and take immediate steps to create a relaxed political atmosphere in the subcontinent by removing all outlandish restrictions on the movement of people between the two countries, thus making it impossible for terrorists to operate, according to the statement.

The PPC also called upon the “sane secular forces among Muslims of the world” to rise above their petty sectarian positions and help launch an international movement against terrorist activities in the name of Islam.