ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Amid nationwide mourning over the massacre of Hazara Shias in Quetta, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf assured an outraged parliament on Monday that his government would “go to every possible extent” to fight terrorists for which he called for “collective wisdom and collective action”.

While the Hazara community in Quetta still refused to bury people killed in Saturday’s terrorist bombing, angry lawmakers agitated in both houses of parliament against the second such sectarian carnage in 40 days, while some opposition parties staged protest walkouts, but the prime minister spoke only in the National Assembly at the start of the likely last session of its five-year term.

“The dangers facing Pakistan and the Pakistani people today need collective wisdom and collective action (to fight them),” he said at the end of a debate in which members from all political parties condemned the attacks in Quetta as well as in Karachi and Peshawar, some of them calling for the removal of Balochistan governor and heads of police and security agencies operating in the province.

“On behalf of the government, I assure the whole of Pakistan that we will go to every possible extent,” he said, adding: “The people who committed this atrocity will get effective punishment.”

In some of his other strong remarks during his speech, the prime minister vowed that the “perpetrators of this zulm will face hell” and that the government would use “whatever security force is needed” to eradicate terrorism, but he did not refer to Hazara community’s demand to hand over the Balochistan capital to the army.

However, the strongest speech of the day in the National Assembly came from Sheikh Waqqas Akram of the government-allied Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Minister for Education and Training, who, while calling for all political parties to confront rather than befriend known terrorist groups for electoral considerations, said: “This is no time for speeches, we need action. This is the time to go against these outfits with full force. If they come to kill us, they should be killed first.”

The prime minister, whose government faced opposition criticism earlier in the debate for what some lawmakers called insensitivity to the situation despite repeated attacks against Shias, promised full protection and help to members of the Hazara community and said he had asked the Balochistan governor to investigate any negligence or incompetence responsible for the second attack in Quetta despite the imposition of governor’s rule in the province after the January 10 suicide bomb attacks that had killed about 100 people.

He said the federal government would take action against any federal agency for its faults while the provincial government should act against provincial agencies.

At the start of the debate, PPP member Nasir Ali Shah from Quetta, who himself is a Hazara, staged a solitary walkout and announced the start of a hunger strike outside the house until the government took action against terrorists, after making a sentimental speech in which he warned that “Pakistan will sink” unless the country discarded what he called “Ziaul Haq’s formula” of arming terrorists.

Maulana Ataullah of opposition Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam led a token walkout by members of his party after a speech in which he called the Quetta attacks part of a conspiracy to get the coming elections postponed, against which, he said, political forces should unite.

Much later, Shaikh Salahuddin of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement led his party’s first walkout from the lower houses after it announced quitting the ruling coalition two days ago.

The Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), main opposition party, did not join any of the walkouts in the National Assembly though two of its members, Rana Tanveer Hussain and Shaikh Rohale Asghar, lambasted the government for its perceived failures and Mr Hussain later exchanged some angry remarks with minister Waqqas Akram.

However, in the Senate, where several lawmakers spoke on points of order while a formal debate on the situation will be held on Tuesday morning, PML-N’s Raja Zafarul Haq, following walkouts by the MQM and JUI, announced a walkout by his party just before the upper house Chairman Nayyar Hussain Bokhari adjourned proceedings.

In the National Assembly, PPP’s Nadeem Afzal Gondal, chairman of the house Public Accounts Committee, sounded so frustrated with the prevailing situation that he proposed that politicians better step aside for a couple of years and let unspecified powers to run the country.

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