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Updated 13 Mar, 2017 02:06pm

Chinese troops, Turkish band to feature at Pakistan Day parade

Chinese troops and a Turkish military band will feature at the Pakistan Day parade later this month, Pakistan Army's media wing announced on Monday.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director general, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, said in a tweet that Chinese soldiers will take part in the March 23 parade to mark Pakistan Day celebrations.

A Turkish military band will also participate in the parade, the tweet added.

The parade is organised by joint staff headquarters in Rawalpindi, which oversees the three armed forces of Pakistan.

Contingents of the Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force have reportedly arrived in the federal capital for parade rehearsals, with stringent security measures in place.

The military parade was resumed in 2015 after a gap of seven years and was seen as a manifestation of the military's show of strength in the wake of a shocking attack in 2014 on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar, which left 150 dead, including 132 schoolchildren.

Pakistan Day commemorates the passage of the Lahore Resolution on March 23, 1940, under which the Muslims of the British Indian Empire demanded a separate nation, as well as the declaration of Pakistan as an Islamic republic on the same day in 1956.

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