KARACHI - Pakistan ordered hundreds of extra paramilitary policemen
onto the streets of the country's biggest city on Thursday after a
fresh night of political and ethnic violence killed 14 people.
"We
have dispatched 500 FC (Frontier Constabulary) troops in Karachi,"
Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad.
The
move comes five days after Malik claimed that the government had
restored order to parts of Karachi, where a week of unrest killed 95
people in the deadliest year of violence in Pakistan's financial
capital since 1995.
The situation also forced the early closure
at the Karachi Stock Exchange due to poor attendance, Mohammad Sohail,
chief executive officer of the Topline Securities brokerage, told AFP.
"We
closed the stock market after half a day due to the deteriorated law
and order situation in the city. We did not open the market for the
afternoon session because there was very small attendance," he said.
The
fresh violence erupted after provincial minister Zulfiqar Mirza, from
the main ruling Pakistan People's Party, criticised its ex-coalition
partner, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and its exiled leader Altaf
Hussain.
Mirza later said in a statement that those remarks were
his "personal opinion" and "if someone was hurt by them then I
apologise".
The MQM last month quit the PPP-led coalition that
governs the country and the southern province of Sindh, of which
Karachi is the capital.
The party, which represents the Urdu-speaking majority in Karachi, has called for nationwide protests over Mirza's criticism.
Roads
were deserted on Thursday, with minimal traffic in normally bustling
commercial and residential areas of Karachi, where most shopping malls,
markets and restaurants were closed.
Home ministry official Sharafuddin Memon said that the death toll had risen to 14 and intermittent gunfire was heard in Karachi.
"Fourteen people have been killed and the situation was tense in Karachi," Memon told AFP.
The city police chief had earlier said 12 people, including a paramilitary Rangers soldier, had been killed in the violence.
He said 21 people were injured and more than a dozen vehicles had been
set ablaze in different parts of the city, adding that police had
rounded up around 160 suspects.
Political and ethnic violence in
Karachi is blamed on loyalists of MQM and those of the Awami National
Party (ANP), which still belongs to the ruling coalition and which
represents migrant Pashtuns from the northwest.
The worst
affected areas are impoverished and heavily populated neighbourhoods
where most of the criminal gangs are believed to be hiding.
The
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says 490 people were killed in
targeted killings in Karachi in the first half of the year, compared to
748 in 2010 and the worst since 1995. AFP
