JuD offers funeral prayers for slain Taliban leader

Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) offered funeral prayers in absentia for Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor at its Markaz near Fawara Chowk in the Peshawar cantonment area on Friday. JuD activists also protested the attack and called on the Pakistan government to break ties with the US.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) offered funeral prayers in absentia for Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour on Friday.

Pakistani supporters of the banned fundamentalist organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa burn a US flag in a protest in Peshawar on Friday. (AFP)

After the prayers, held near Fawara Chowk in the Peshawar cantonment area , JuD activists burned American flags and protested the drone attack that killed Mansour, with some saying that the US had repeatedly violated the sovereignty of Pakistan. Hundreds of participants attended the prayers and the protest.

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While most religious parties in Pakistan declined to hold funeral prayers for Mansour, the JuD was one of the exceptions.

However, JuD activists offered the prayers within their seminary instead of holding it on the road, as was the practice in the past.

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The JuD had also scheduled a march from Fawara Chowk to Peshawar Press Club but it was cancelled.

JuD leader Haji Muhammad Iqbal told participants: “Drone attacks on Pakistan are against the sovereignty and solidarity of the country,” adding “America wants to take revenge for its failure (in Afghanistan) from Pakistan and the recent drone attack in Balochistan is the part of this revenge.”