At least 52 people have been killed in a wave of street violence
between rival ethnic groups and criminal gangs in Pakistan's financial
capital of Karachi, police said Friday.
The mounting death toll
over the past 48 hours in the country's biggest city comes despite the
deployment of hundreds of additional police and paramilitary troops
last month.
"At least 31 people were killed on Thursday and four more this morning," city police chief Saud Mirza told AFP.
"Some 17 people had been killed on Wednesday, taking the toll to 52," he said.
A
security official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the
latest toll and blamed criminal gangs for most of the violence.
Independent
economist A.B. Shahid estimated that 20 percent of the city's business
was shut down Thursday with markets closed in southern neighbourhoods
to protest against extortion money demanded by criminal gangs.
The
federal and the provincial governments have struggled to quell the
unrest, which this year has been at its deadliest in 16 years.
A
former MP for the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Waja Karimdad,
was among those killed in the most recent bout of violence.
Karachi
is used by NATO to ship the bulk of its supplies to troops fighting in
Afghanistan and accounts for around a fifth of the country's GDP.
Regular
unrest, mainly in the form of gunfights and assassinations, has been
linked to ethnic tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking
majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun
migrants affiliated to the Awami National Party (ANP).
Karachi,
currently a city of 18 million and the economic powerhouse of the
country, has seen its population explode since independence in 1947.
Its
neighbourhoods have been swollen by a huge influx of migrants from
across the country, but particularly the deprived, Pashtun northwest,
looking for jobs and more recently to escape Taliban and
Al-Qaeda-linked violence.
Most of the killings have been reported
in the southern Lyari neighbourhood, a PPP stronghold infested by
powerful criminal gangs.
Karachi's worst-affected areas are
impoverished and heavily populated neighbourhoods where most of the
criminal gangs are believed to be hiding.
The independent Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan said 800 people have been killed in
Karachi so far this year, compared with 748 in 2010. AFP
