ISLAMABAD, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Anger, violence and agitation are steaming out but still remained untamed on Wednesday, as the administration in the northwestern Pakistani city of Abbottabad has announced the release of arrested protestors on the 14th day of the riots that have killed at least seven people and left over 100 wounded.
"All arrested protestors are being released," Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters amid the demand to arrest and charge the area police chief and administration for roughing up protestors in the past two days.
The main Karakoram Highway on the traditional silk route is still blocked for the seventh day trapping hundreds of vehicles in the loop, as negotiations between the local administration and the protestors failed to bear fruits.
In a gesture of goodwill, the administration has replaced the divisional police chief and announced the withdrawal of Section- 144 that prohibits rallies, exhibition of arms.
While small groups of protestors are still on loose with tires burning and protestor's erected barricades keeping all main avenues of the city blocked and life still paralyzed.
The paramilitary Frontier Corps is on guard to cover the police that have become retaliatory target of irate protestors.
With Pakistani politicians attempting to gain mileage out of volcanic eruption of the renaming issue of North West Frontier Province as "Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa", engaged in a blame game, the administration has shown flexibility to extinguish the inferno of charged sentiments in the Hindko language speaking Hazara division, the largest administrative unit in the Pushtun-dominant province of 20 million inhabitants.
Analysts believe that the political leaders, who are in a tug- of-war with each other over the non-Pushtun vote bank, are not in a position to roll back the demand for a separate Hazara province now, as the streets are ruled by mobs chanting this popular " mantra."
"The concerns of Hazara people will be addressed politically," Malik told reporters, as deliberations on the 18th Constitutional Amendment package is on the second day in the Senate for formal approval after being passed by the National Assembly with a thumping majority last week.
Renaming the northwest province is the only irritant left unresolved and it can jeopardize the whole applecart because the ethnic Hazara that comprises some 30 percent in the Pushtun majority province refused to move an inch on their demand.
"Heirs of the victims of killing will be compensated," declared the interior minister while giving another soothing gesture, saying that the government respects the desire of Hazara people.