ISLAMABAD, Dec 12: Several offices and other facilities of Jamaatud Dawa were sealed and a large number of its members arrested as the countrywide crackdown on the organisation continued on Friday after the United Nations declared the group as a ‘terrorist outfit’.

The government placed Dawa Amir Hafiz Mohammad Saeed under house arrest for three months and sealed Al-Qaadsia Mosque, the headquarters of the organisation, on Thursday.

Over 181 workers of the Dawa were arrested and 46 offices sealed across the Frontier province on Friday.

Police sources said that Dawa’s provincial office in Peshawar’s Fawara Chowk was sealed on Thursday night while other offices in the province on Friday morning.

Dawa spokesman Attiq-ur-Rehman Chohan told reporters outside the sealed office at Fawara Chowk that workers were arrested from offices in Mardan, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Haripur, Malakand, Swabi and other districts of the province.

He said the government action would deprive over 400,000 people displaced by the military operation in the Bajuar Agency of food, medicines and other items.

He said Dawa leaders were in touch with the NWFP government to find a solution to the problems. He said that leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam and other parties were also being contacted to raise the issue in the Senate and National Assembly.The cantonment police sealed an office of the Dawa at a mosque in Jangle Khel area of Kohat district.

The caretaker of the office, Qari Naseeruddin, and his deputy Maulana Imshad had gone underground on Wednesday after collecting hides of sacrificial animals, witnesses said.

However, a seminary of the organisation in the Mir Ahmed Khel village, which remained closed for Eid holidays, was not sealed because of fear that its closure may fuel sectarian violence in the area.

Police sealed a school and a dispensary of the Dawa in Mansehra district and arrested a dozen workers.

In Mardan, an office of the organization was sealed and four workers were arrested.

Police sealed three offices of the religious outfit each in Haripur, Nowshera and Attock.

In Lahore, police arrested six activists and sealed three offices of the Dawa in Faisal Town, Regal Chowk and on Lytton Road.

According to police sources, a list of 28 activists of the Dawa and 23 of Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad had been prepared and handed over to law-enforcement agencies.

Police sealed six offices in Lodhran, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan and arrested an activist of the organisation, Imran Sarwar, in Rajanpur. A district president of the Dawa was detained on Thursday.

Three offices and a dispensary of the organisation were sealed and two dispensers and a telephone operator arrested in Gujranwala.

Police also sealed three offices of the Dawa in Toba Tek Singh, two in Sahiwal, six in Kasur, two in Gujrat and one in Sheikhupura.

Jhelum police sealed two offices and a dispensary of the group in the district. DPO Waqar Ahmed Chohan told Dawn that the action had been taken on a directive of the interior ministry. An ambulance of the dispensary was also seized.

He said that police were conducting raids to arrest 13 activists of the organisation.

In Azad Kashmir, authorities have sealed Jamaatud Dawa’s offices and other facilities in all eight districts, including two madressahs, a healthcare unit, a middle school and a workshop.

Additional home secretary Mohammad Zafar Khan told Dawn that eight members of the organisation had been detained in Muzaffarabad and Kundal Shahi (Neelum valley).

The head of Dawa’s AJK chapter, Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi, was placed under house arrest in his native Karyan village, 19kms north of Muzaffarabad.