Pakistan Shiites call off protest on fourth day

Thousands of Shiite Muslims from Pakistan's minority Hazara community ended a nearly four-day protest Monday after Islamabad caved into their demands for protection by sacking the provincial government.

Men, women and children spent four nights camped in freezing conditions, refusing to bury the victims of Pakistan's worst single attack on Shiites, which killed 92 people in the southwestern city of Quetta last Thursday.

In other cities across Pakistan, solidarity protests were held by hundreds of other Shiites, who account for 20% of the population and according to Human Rights Watch last year suffered record levels of violence.

The protesters had demanded that the army take over in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which also suffers from a nine-year separatist insurgency and Islamist militancy.

Extreme Sunni Muslim group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for Thursday's bombing at a snooker hall, which wounded more than 120 people.

Hazaras were initially divided over whether the government had gone far enough in accepting their demands by appointing the governor to take over, but by 11:00am (0600 GMT), families started leaving to prepare their dead for burial.

"The protest has been called off, burials will be after Zuhar (afternoon) prayers," Shiite leader Sadat Ali Khan announced at the protest.

An AFP photographer said families had started to take bodies of loved ones killed on Thursday to a local mosque to prepare them for burial.

Shiite leaders had said overnight that they would not call off their protest until they saw official notification of the orders from Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.

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