Reuters/Islamabad
A Pakistani mob killed a woman member of a religious sect and two of her granddaughters after a sect member was accused of posting blasphemous material on Facebook, police said Monday, the latest instance of growing violence against minorities.
The dead, including a seven-year-old girl and her baby sister, were Ahmadis.
Police said the late Sunday violence in the town of Gujranwala, 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital, Islamabad, started with an altercation between young men, one of whom was an Ahmadi accused of posting "objectionable material".
"Later, a crowd of 150 people came to the police station demanding the registration of a blasphemy case against the accused," said one police officer who declined to be identified.
"As police were negotiating with the crowd, another mob attacked and started burning the houses of Ahmadis."
The youth accused of making the Facebook post had not been injured, he said.
Resident Munawar Ahmed, 60, said he drove terrified neighbours to safety as the mob attacked.
"The attackers were looting and plundering, taking away fans and whatever valuables they could get hold of and dragging furniture into the road and setting fire to it... Some were continuously firing into the air," he said.
"A lot of policemen arrived but they stayed on the sidelines and didn't intervene," he said.
The police officer said they had tried to stop the mob.
