LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - At least 11 people were killed and more than 100 people injured by sharpened kite strings, stray bullets and other accidents at an annual kite-flying festival in eastern Pakistan, officials said Monday.
The two-day Basant festival is regularly marred by casualties caused by sharpened kite strings or celebratory gunshots fired into the air. Kite flyers often use strings made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to damage a rival's kite, often after betting on the outcome.
Authorities had banned kite flying following a string of deaths at the festival last year, but temporarily lifted it before this year's event. Officials said the ban was re-imposed following the latest deaths.
Police arrested more than 700 people for using sharpened kite strings or firing guns, and seized nearly 300 illegal weapons during this year's festival, said Aftab Cheema, a senior Lahore police officer.
Five of those who died Sunday were hit by stray bullets, including a 6-year-old boy who was struck in the head, said Ruqia Bano, emergency services spokeswoman in Lahore.
A 16-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy died after their throats were slashed by metal kite strings in separate incidents. Two people were electrocuted as they tried to recover kites tangled in overhead power cables, and two people fell from roofs, Bano said.
Those wacky Muslims. Can't they do anything that isn't violent and/or causes death ?
Are the people that were killed considered kite martyrs ?
Frank J at imao pondered the same thing.
As usual he's funnier than me.
Muslims + Kites = Eleven Dead
I want to understand the cultures in the Middle East. I want to get along and not look down on everyone there, but, really, how do you turn a kite festival into a massacre? You'd think with all the killing over there that they'd be looking for ways to get a break from the violence, not new creative ways to turn the most harmless things into a bloodbath.
So, it's at least eleven dead and over one hundred injured from a kite festival in Pakistan. This wasn't the first time either, as a BBC article says that nine were killed in the 2004 festival causing kites to be banned for a while in Pakistan. We all know that won't stop violence, though, as you can remove the kite from a man's hand but not the murder from his heart. He'll just get his hands on a pinwheel or a hula hoop and you have another massacre on your hands.
I think that's enough news from the Middle East for today. Anymore and I might get jaded.
UPDATE:
Before I noted how you could add "Muslims Are Offended" to any headline and it won't sound out of place, and I think we have something similar here. For any event happening in the Middle East, you can just add a casualty count to the end of headline and no one would notice. E.g. "Children's Literacy Event Held in Saudi Arabia; 12 Dead"
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