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MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — A spokesman for Pakistan's minority Ahmadis says authorities demolished a 70-year-old mosque belonging to the sect in a remote village in eastern Punjab province.
Saleem-ud-Din says district police moved in over the weekend to demolish the mudbrick mosque in Hasilpur, a Muslim-majority village with only about a dozen Ahmadi residents.
He says the mosque's dome reserved for the prayer leader was destroyed and left in a pile of rubble.
Din says authorities claimed the mosque was built illegally on government land, which he denies. There was no immediate government comment.
There are about half a million of Ahmadis in Pakistan, which has a population of 220 million. Pakistan declared Ahmadis non-Muslims in 1974.
Ahmadi homes and places of worship are often targeted by Sunni militants who consider them heretics.
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