New Year's Eve is usually marked in boisterous fashion in Pakistan, with fireworks and aerial gunfire.
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has banned New Year celebrations to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the government said late Thursday, urging people to instead “observe simplicity”.
In a televised address to the nation on Thursday, Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said because of the situation in the Gaza Strip, the government had “completely banned all kinds of events regarding the New Year celebrations”.
Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, has left much of the territory’s north in ruins, and killed about 22,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
“The entire Pakistani nation and the Muslim Ummah were deeply saddened by the genocide of the oppressed Palestinians, especially the massacre of innocent children, in Gaza and the West Bank,” Kakar said.
New Year’s Eve is usually marked in boisterous fashion in Pakistan, with fireworks and aerial gunfire – as well as a bank holiday on 1 January.
Sharjah, an emirate of the United Arab Emirates, also banned New Year fireworks over the war in Gaza.
The ban was “a sincere expression of solidarity and humanitarian cooperation with our siblings in the Gaza Strip”, Sharjah Police said in a Facebook post. – Agencies
