Hundreds protest over strike on alleged al-Qaida hide-out

Hundreds of religious hard-liners chanting “Jihad!” staged rallies today in a Pakistani town against an army airstrike on a suspected al-Qaida hide-out and claimed it had killed innocent labourers, witnesses said.

About 1,000 supporters of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party marched through Tank, a city about 100 miles north of the scene of yesterday’s attack near the Afghan border in South Waziristan that the army said killed eight militants.