Dozens of people have been killed in Pakistan’s largest city, including three found decapitated over the weekend in a wave of targeted attacks among rival political groups that some say is aimed at destabilizing the country’s ruling coalition.
Political violence is common in Karachi, but the shootings and decapitations since Jan. 1 have terrorized parts of this teeming southern metropolis, prompting the government to send in paramilitary forces to restore order.
The political infighting comes at a time when the government is facing a raging Taliban-led insurgency that has spread to Karachi and killed more than 600 people across the country in the past three months. The growing unrest in the financial capital threatens to spark further instability.
“We have found four bodies of our party workers today,” said Faisal Sabzwari, a provincial lawmaker from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the strongest political party in Karachi and one dominated by the minority Mohajir ethnic group.
“Three of them were headless, and we found the heads later on,” Sabzwari said on Sunday.
Sabzwari blamed members of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) for fueling the violence, saying much of it was being carried out by thugs from Lyari Town, a poor area of Karachi and a PPP stronghold.
“They are the Lyari gang members and criminals who are killing our workers, and there are some elements within the ruling party who patronize them,” he said.
Qaim Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh Province, where Karachi is the capital, and a member of the ruling party, seemed to make similar allegations against the MQM. He did not name the group directly but said “a political party” was behind the killings of its workers.
“Targeted killings are a conspiracy against the provincial government and sacrifices of PPP workers won’t go unrewarded,” he told reporters on Saturday.
Although both parties are members of the ruling coalition, they have a tense relationship and a history of conflict that dates back to the arrival of Mohajir immigrants from India after Pakistan gained independence in 1947. Native Sindhis, who mostly support the ruling party, resented the Mohajirs’ attempts to secure well-paying government jobs.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday that 41 people have died in targeted killings in Karachi since the beginning of the year, including 10 MQM workers, 10 from a breakaway faction called Haqiqi, and 16 members of a committee set up by the ruling party in Lyari to control violence in the area.
The five others were from a handful of political and religious groups, the ministry said.
Karachi Police Chief Wasim Ahmed provided different figures and played down the crisis. He said 50 people had been killed during the first nine days of the year, but only 20 deaths were politically or ethnically motivated.
“The average killing rate is 5.5 a day, which is not alarming in a city which has a population of 18 million,” Ahmed said.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Sri Lanka’s fragile economic recovery could be hampered by threatened trade union strikes over reduced benefits for government employees in this year’s budget, the IMF said yesterday. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s maiden budget raised public sector salaries, but also made deep cuts to longstanding perks in a continuing effort to repair the island nation’s tattered finances. Sri Lanka’s main doctors’ union is considering a strike from today to protest against cuts to their allowances, while teachers are also considering stoppages. IMF senior mission chief for Sri Lanka Peter Breuer said the budget was the “last big push” for the country’s austerity
RSS