ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday demanded an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza along with a humanitarian corridor for international aid agencies to provide relief to the people of Palestine ahead of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s summit in Gambia this weekend.

The ceasefire call was issued by the country’s newly appointed deputy prime minister, Ishaq Dar, while addressing the summit’s preparatory meeting in the Gambian capital of Banjul, where he arrived on Wednesday.

Dar is scheduled to participate in the OIC summit, convened to discuss and address major issues affecting the Muslim world, ranging from political and economic challenges to social and cultural matters.

These summits aim to promote Muslim solidarity in social and political affairs, coordinate efforts to safeguard the interests and well-being of Muslims and work toward resolving conflicts and issues in the Muslim world.

“Dar expressed Pakistan’s deep concern about the ongoing genocide and starvation of Gaza people and called for the reactivation of OIC’s Ministerial Committee on Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, offering Pakistan’s assistance to the body,” said the state-owned Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) news agency.

The report said he called for an end the Israeli siege leading to a humanitarian crisis for the people of Palestine and to hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration accountable for its “war crimes.”

“Ishaq Dar stressed the imperative of joint action by the OIC to confront rising Islamophobia, which was manifested by an increasing number of incidents of discrimination, violence, and incitement against Muslims around the world,” the APP report continued.

“He stated that while global social media platforms had set for themselves a clear understanding and the responsibility of content relating to ‘Antisemitism’ and ‘Holocaust denial’, same was not the case for blasphemous and anti-Islamic content that was responsible for widespread distress among Muslims and the global wave of Islamophobia,” it added.

The Pakistani deputy prime minister is scheduled to interact with leaders of other Muslim states at the two-day OIC summit beginning on Saturday.

QUETTA: A senior journalist was killed in a powerful blast that claimed at least two other lives in Pakistan’s volatile southwestern Balochistan province, confirmed a senior administration official on Friday, after a motorcyclist attached an explosive device to his vehicle at a bustling market area.

The incident that took place in Khuzdar, a remote city in the region, on World Press Freedom Day sent shockwaves through the media community in the province that has witnessed much violence in the last couple of decades.

Maulvi Muhammad Siddique Mengal, the targeted journalist, was currently the president of the Khuzdar Press Club and had also received threats from unknown individuals in the past.

“President of the Khuzdar Press Club Maulvi Muhammad Siddique Mengal and two bike riders near his vehicle were killed in the attack,” Deputy Commissioner Khuzdar Arif Khan Zarkoon told Arab News after the emergence of the CCTV footage of the attack. “Five people were injured who were shifted to the District Hospital Khuzdar for treatment.”

“Mengal was traveling in his private vehicle to a mosque to offer Friday prayers when an unknown man attached a magnetic explosive device to his vehicle which exploded at Chamrook Chowk and killed him on the spot,” he added.

So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Maulvi Siddique Mengal had been receiving threats from unknown people for the last year,” said one of the local journalists who requested anonymity. “He survived a firing attack nine months ago. Journalism has become a life-threatening profession in Khuzdar. We even closed Khuzdar Press Club for more than six months after threats by unknown people in 2012.”

Pakistan is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, particularly for those working in the country’s western Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international organization working for journalists’ safety, at least 62 media workers have been killed in targeted attacks in Pakistan since 1992.

The Balochistan Union of Journalists (BUJ) has strongly condemned Mengal’s murder, demanding the arrest of the perpetrators of the Khuzdar blast.

Khalil ur Rehman, the BUJ president, said targeting a journalist on World Press Freedom Day was an attempt to suppress the voice of media workers in Balochistan.

“Forty-two journalists have lost their lives in Balochistan over the last two decades, while 10 journalists were killed in Khuzdar district during the last decade, but not a single murderer of journalists has been arrested yet,” he told Arab News. “Journalists in Balochistan are already facing security challenges, but this attack indicates that targeted attacks against journalists have started again.”

Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, chief minister of Balochistan, has strongly condemned Mengal’s killing, ordering an investigation into it.

“The Balochistan government will utilize all resources to arrest the perpetrators involved in the killing of the senior journalist in Khuzdar,” he said in a statement. “Terrorists involved in sabotaging peace in Balochistan won’t succeed.”