ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said flags would fly at half-mast on Monday, in solidarity with the families of victims of the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday.New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called the shootings a terrorist attack. So far 50 people have died, nine of them Pakistanis, with a list of people missing released by the Red Cross including Afghan, Bangladeshi, Indian, Jordanian, Pakistani and Saudi nationals.Another Pakistani remains in critical condition in hospital.“The whole nation is in mourning, and the prime minister has decided that our national flag will fly at half-mast tomorrow,” Qureshi said at a news conference on Sunday, adding that the process of identifying citizens killed in the attack had finished, with bodies due to be released to their families on Monday.“We are in touch with all the families. Six want their loved ones to be buried in Christchurch, while three bodies will be brought back to Pakistan.”He said Wellington had agreed to keep Islamabad abreast of ongoing investigations into the attacks.Qureshi paid special tribute to one of the dead, Naeem Rashid, who was seen in video footage launching himself at the gunman in an attempt to disarm him. He will be honored with a posthumous national award on Pakistan Day, March 23.An emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of countries belonging to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been called in Istanbul on March 22 to discuss Islamophobia in the aftermath of the Christchurch attacks.“The idea (behind the meeting) is to devise a strategy against Islamophobia, while keeping the Christchurch tragedy in mind,” Qureshi said. He added that he had contacted the leader of the opposition, Shehbaz Sharif, and the Pakistan Peoples Party chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, to discuss the National Action Plan, Pakistan’s primary counter-terrorism strategy, on March 28.On Friday, Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack on Twitter, saying: “I blame these increasing terror attacks on the current Islamophobia post-9/11 (where) 1.3 billion Muslims have collectively been blamed for any act of terror.”
