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.
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