An angry mob in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday attacked and set a 100-year-old Hindu temple on fire, prompting condemnations from the Hindu minority in the Muslim-majority country, officials said.
Video footage filmed by local residents showed a crowd smashing the walls of the temple structure with stones and hammers, as smoke rose from a large fire.
A police officer, Rahmatullah Wazir, in a town in the Karak region, told Reuters that local Muslim clerics had informed the police that they would organize a peaceful protest against the alleged expansion of the temple in the town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in northwest Pakistan.
He added that the clerics leading the protest began giving “inflammatory speeches,” after which the crowd attacked the temple.
The Hindus are the largest non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, which gained independence from British rule in 1947 when the Indian subcontinent was divided into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India.
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