KARACHI, Oct 31: The Jamiat Talaba-i-Arabia on Tuesday condemned the helicopter attack by the troops on a seminary in Bajaur that left 82 people dead and announced that the association of the madressah students would hold demonstrations across the country against the attack on Thursday.

“This attack was part of a game masterminded by the United States and its western allies to punish the religious schools. Our government is playing at the hands of its foreign masters,” Hafiz Sajid Anwer, JTA chief organizer said at a press conference held at Karachi Press Club.

He blamed the US for hatching conspiracies against Islamic seminaries and added that such plots were causing killing of seminary teachers and students and destroying mosques and madressahs.

“The present government is killing our students and teachers and handing over innocent people to American agencies to earn dollars,” Mr Anwer said.

He said the federal government was the sole responsible for the recent attack in Bajaur. “The government involved in the killing of innocent children should realize and accept its crime and step down,” he said.

He said that religious schools had the history as old as the religion itself and neither in the past nor at present had any such school been involved in practicing and propagating terrorism.

“Madressahs have no role, whatsoever, in terrorism and the government is using baseless allegations to defame this institution. Despite leveling a series of accusations, the government has not yet succeeded to prove any of our madressahs involved in terror acts,” Mr Anwer said.

He said the government headed by General Musharraf was killing its own fellow Muslims on the dubious charges of Al Qaeda and other extremist organisations.

He claimed that the US forces and Pakistani troops were equally involved in the attack on Bajaur madressah. He said the direct involvement of the US troops in the military action in Pakistani territory was aimed at sabotaging Islamabad’s deal with tribal leaders in Waziristan and preventing a similar deal of Pakistani government in Bajaur.

He said that the Jamiat would hold demonstrations in every district on Thursday and appealed to all the religious institutions and religious student organisations to join the JTA or hold similar protests across the country.

Meanwhile, Pasban Karachi’s president Shafiqullah Ismail termed the bombing on Bajaur as an ‘anti-human’ act, which killed more than 80 innocent citizens of Pakistan.

In a statement, he urged the Supreme Court of Pakistan to set up a high-level judicial commission to investigate the incident and order registration of cases against those involved.

The incident was also condemned by Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam (Fazlur Rehman) Karachi’s leaders Maulana Hamadullah Shah and Maulana Khan Mohammad Rabbani. They said the incident in Bajaur was a direct attack by the US forces on Pakistani soil.