Prayers held in Valley for children killed in Peshawar

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, December 17

Special prayers were today held at several places in Srinagar for the children, massacred at a school in Pakistan’s Peshawar city and condemnations continued to pour against the attack.

At least 132 students and nine staff members were killed yesterday after Taliban gunmen broke into a school in Peshawar and opened fire in the bloodiest massacre the country has seen in recent years. The attack has been widespread global condemnation. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah termed the perpetrators of the attack as “Godless animals”.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference, today led the funeral prayers in absentia for the slain children. He was joined by several hundred people at the city’s Jamia Masjid.

“The people of Jammu and Kashmir are with the people of Pakistan in this grief and pain…the incident that happened yesterday is against human and Islamic values,” Mirwaiz said after the prayers. Syed Ali Geelani, who heads the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference, also led a separate funeral-in-absentia for the slain children at a mosque in Hyderpora.

Geelani condemned the attack as terrorism and described it as heart-wrenching. Similar prayers were also offered at the High Court complex in Srinagar by the members of the J&K High Court Bar Association, who also suspended their work for the half day.

In a statement, the association said it condemned the attack in “the strongest terms” and expressed grief and sorrow over the massacre. It described the attack as “a senseless one and a sheer act of cowardice”.

The Doctors Association Kashmir also condemned the incident and termed it “barbaric”. “This deadliest and bloodiest carnage of innocent children is indeed a murder of humanity. Our heart bleeds to see kids being slaughtered in cold blood,” DAK president Nisar-ul-Hasan said in a statement.