Rallies were held after the Jumma prayers (Namaz-e-Jumma), at different areas in the city to denounce the recent killing of 18 people by Indian forces in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and express solidarity with the innocent people of Kashmir.
Similar rallies were held in Islamabad,and elsewhere in the country.
Asadullah Bhutto, a local leader of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami party, told a rally in Karachi that India had killed “innocent civilians and freedom fighters” in Kashmir.
Pakistan’s government issued a call earlier in the week for the rallies in solidarity with the Kashmiris.
Violence has escalated in the Himalayan region since clashes on Sunday, in which Indian officials said three of its troops were killed, as well as 13 “rebels” and five civilians.
Kashmir is split between Pakistan and India and claimed by both it in its entirety.
Demonstrators also criticized the “double standards” of the UN and human rights organisations for remaining silent spectators to state-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir and Palestine.
They said that Muslims in India-held Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria and Myanmar were suffering untold atrocities and their children, women, youth and elders were being massacred but world powers felt no empathy for them.
