Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, special assistant to the prime minister on religious harmony and the Middle East, said on Wednesday that India was making an alliance of international terrorist groups in Afghanistan and the murder of 11 Shia Hazara coalminers in Balochistan’s Machh area was the work of this alliance. 

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Ashrafi said he would lead a delegation of Islamic scholars to Quetta to express solidarity with the families of the coalminers who were kidnapped and then shot dead by militants in Balochistan a few days ago. He said that he had received instructions from the prime minister and he was in contact with the protesting families of the coalminers. He said everybody was sad about this incident. 

The PM aide said that people who pulled down a Hindu temple in the Karak area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and those who facilitated them had been arrested. He said the incident was meant to malign Pakistan and Islam. He said that international terrorist organisations wanted to destroy Pakistan the way they destroyed Iraq, Syria and Yemen. 

The religious scholar said that incidents of forced marriages decreased by 90 percent in the last three months. He said the entire nation would have to unite against extremism.