Eight more convicts hanged in Pakistan

Islamabad: Eight more death row prisoners were hanged in Pakistan on Wednesday following the end of a month’s moratorium on executions during Ramadan, officials said.

The moratorium expired on Monday, when two murder convicts were sent to the gallows at a jail in the city of Multan, in Punjab.

The eight executions were carried out in Punjab province, at jails in the towns of Attock, Kasur, Multan, Jhang, Sargodha and Gujrat.

The prisoners had been convicted by courts at different times in the past on charges of committing murders.

The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to bring back the moratorium on the death penalty.

The moratorium was lifted after the massacre of 134 children in a terrorist attack last December at an army state school in Peshawar, northwestern provincial capital.