Quetta's Hazara: The community caged in its own city

Close to 1,000 victims of militant attacks are said to be buried in the cemetery of the Mari Abad district of Quetta.

Some of the graves are clustered together, where family members have been buried side by side.
The district in south-west Pakistan is almost entirely populated by the minority Hazara community, which belongs to the Shia sect of Islam.
For decades they have been targeted by sectarian extremists using suicide bombings and targeted shootings.
Daoud Agha, president of the Balochistan Shia Conference, is defiant: "Children have been orphaned, wives have been widowed, but we will never abandon our faith."
This year more than a dozen Hazaras have been killed in and around Quetta, but in the past the annual death toll was far higher. In 2013 more than 200 were killed.
But for the Hazara community the reduction of violence has come at a cost, its members are now effectively living in ghettos that many describe as a prison.

The response from the Pakistani authorities to the wave of violence against the Hazara has been to build walls blocking streets leading to their districts from elsewhere in the city, or place military checkpoints along them.
There are no longer attacks inside Hazara areas, but elsewhere in the city they have continued to be targeted.
As a result the Hazara community has been confined to two parts of the city; anyone who wants to enter them is questioned by soldiers. The checkpoints may be for the safety of the residents, but they aren't popular.

'Living in a cage'

Not far from the cemetery, on the Alamdar Road, once the site of many of the attacks, one resident, Haji Mohammed Musa, railed against the measures.
"Yes, violence here has come down, but we can't go anywhere else in the city. We can't do business any more. We're living in a cage," he says.
The community once dominated the main bazaar in the city, now nearly all those with shops there have relocated into one of the two Hazara districts.

Mr Musa, like many others, believes more should be done to target the militants responsible for the violence: "If a government can't deal with a handful of terrorists, how can they call themselves a government?"
Leaving Mari Abad can prove deadly. Hazaras are said to be the descendants of Mongols, and are identifiable from their distinct facial features.