Pakistan border guards on Wednesday refused to let in the bodies of eight of the 35 Pakistani militants killed in a US bombing raid on Kabul, officials said.
The 35 members of the Pakistani group Harakat ul-Mujahedin, which the United States has linked to terrorism, were reported killed in a US bomb attack on the Afghan capital on Monday.
"We had instructions from higher authorities not to receive the bodies," an official at the Torkham crossing point in the eastern province of Bakhtiar Khan said.
"The bodies were brought to Torkham at 6:00 am. They were the Pakistanis who were killed when a bomb hit a house in Darul Aman in Kabul," he told AFP.
Mufti Jamil, a cleric from the fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) political party, told AFP the men belonged to Harakat and were in Kabul to wage jihad, or holy war, when they were killed on Monday.
Protests were planned by radical groups in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, after the deaths, the groups said.
Police tightened security in the city and paramilitary troops were also deployed. "We have taken preventive security measures and police and rangers are patrolling different parts of the city," police officer Majeed Dasti said.
Harakat gave an initially cautious response. A Harakat leader in Karachi, Iftikhar Ahmed, said the rejection of the bodies was "unfortunate" but the group was awaiting instructions from the central leadership over protests.
"We pray for our brothers who have given their lives for Islam," he said.
The fundamentalist JUI said blocking the bodies was part of the Pakistan government's pro-US policy.
Jamil, the JUI central information secretary, said: "I strongly condemn the decision as they were not Afghans, but Pakistanis and should be buried here.
"Thousands of mujahedin from Pakistan are fighting side by side with Taliban against America and more will join them," he said -- Islamabad, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
