MUZAFFARABAD: Hundreds of Islamist activists in Pakistani-administered Kashmir on Friday demonstrated against the government’s decision to take steps to improve trade with India.
Pakistan’s cabinet last month said it approved a proposal giving India the status of “most favoured nation” in a move towards normalising trade relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Members of banned Islamist groups including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and hardline religious party Jamaat-e-Islami gathered in the main square in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Protesters shouted slogans against the Pakistani government and were joined by supporters of the main opposition party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, an AFP reporter said.
“We will never accept this decision,” Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi, local chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa told the gathering.
His organisation is blacklisted as a terror group by the United Nations and considered a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba that Washington and New Delhi blamed for the killings of 166 people on November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
Protesters later blocked the main road passing through Muzaffarabad city centre by setting tyres on fire.
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