Pakistan resumes executions after Ramadan

Islamabad - Pakistan hanged two murder convicts on Monday, marking the resumption of executions after a temporary moratorium for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, officials said.

The death row prisoners were hanged at a jail in the central city of Multan, said Chaudhry Arshad Saeed, prison superintendent at the jail.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered authorities to halt hangings out of respect for Ramadan, the most revered month of Islamic calendar in which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. 

The holy month ended on July 18.

Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in December 2014 after Taliban militants killed 136 children at a school in the north-western city of Peshawar.

The government said the decision was part of a plan to deter Islamist militants, but fewer than 25 terror convicts have been among around 180 executed so far, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

International rights groups and local activists have been pushing the government to reintroduce the moratorium, calling capital punishment breach of fundamental rights.

The government rejected these calls, saying it wanted to hang all 8 500 death row convicts at prisons across the country.