Former Jamaat-e-Islami senator Mushtaq Ahmed and his wife were among 10 people arrested by police during a pro-Palestine protest in Islamabad on Sunday.
“We only came out for Hassan Nasrallah, Palestine, Lebanon, and against Israel. This government cannot tolerate anti-Israel slogans,” Ahmed said in a video statement.
The video on his social media account showed he was in a police van among arrested protesters.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah confirmed on Saturday that its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut and vowed to continue the battle against Israel.
Nasrallah’s death marks a major blow not only to Hezbollah but also to its alleged backers in Iran. The Israeli military said in a statement that Nasrallah was eliminated in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters under a residential building in Dahiyeh — a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.
His body has been recovered from the site. A medical source and a security source told Reuters on Sunday that his body had no direct wounds and that it appeared the cause of death was blunt trauma from the force of the blast.
The arrests occurred in front of the Press Club, where the federal government has imposed a ban on gatherings, marches, and rallies. The federal police acted under Section 144 of the CrPC, which prohibits such assemblies.
Ahmed told reporters that they were conducting a “peaceful protest” for Palestine when the police charged them with batons.
Women and children were also subjected to violence during the crackdown, he claimed.
Ahmed and his wife were also arrested during a pro-Palestine protest in the federal capital last month. They were allegedly arrested for moving to protest at the D-Chowk.
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The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 which resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed over 40,00 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Incessant Israeli bombardment has also caused a major humanitarian crisis and devastated the health system.
