Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) cordoned off Lyari and arrested over 50 people from different areas on Sunday, whereas five people were injured in firing in the Nayaabad area of the town in the wee hours. According to sources, police, Rangers and Frontier Constabulary (FC) officials conducted a joint targeted operation in different parts of Lyari, including Khadda Market, Usmanabad and Baghdadi, where security forces placed barricades, blocking all entry and exit points.
This time around, the LEAs used a new technique and started their operation in the wee hours, just after sehri.
The forces decided to take action in Lyari at fajr to avoid public wrath because the locals always resist the forces conducting any operation.
Police, Rangers and FC personnel blocked the four entry and exit points of Lyari and started their targeted operation.
Hundreds of locals, including a large number of women, took to the streets of Lyari to protest the operation as soon as they became aware of it, and enraged protesters set tyres on fire on the roads to express their anger.
Over 50 people were arrested in the operation, including an imam of a mosque and two people aged over 70.
Many people have been taken into custody, but official confirmation has yet to be received in this regard.
On the other hand, five people were injured during the search operation when unidentified culprits resorted to aerial firing in the area.
MALIK: Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that indiscriminate surgical operations would continue in the metropolitan.
Talking to the media, Malik said that he has neither had any contact with killers nor would he in the future.
He said that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) represents the public and the Pakistan People’s Party leadership had allowed him (Malik) to negotiate with the MQM.
The minister said that 11 people were freed from Lyari as a result of the silent operation, adding, “We knew that our friends in Lyari would be angry because of this operation.”
He said that the operation was being carried out on the instructions of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, adding that the people of Lyari are his brothers and sisters.
The operation is being conducted without any discrimination as 11 Urdu-speaking people have also been arrested in the operation, he added.
He claimed that the LEAs found two torture cells and heavy weapons from the area, whereas police sources have denied this statement.
BALOCH: Zafar Baloch, the PPP leader in Lyari who has submitted his resignation to protest the operation in the area, told Pakistan Today that it was very clear now that Malik is a puppet in the hands of the MQM as well as a big liar as claimed by Mirza.
“The operation is being conducted on Malik’s instructions just to please the MQM because Lyari is the only area where people are resisting MQM’s acts of terrorism in Karachi,” Baloch said. He added that Mirza and the people of Lyari would fight for restoring peace to the city and pressure tactics would not be able to create any hurdles in their aims.
MORE KILLED: A man was killed in Khamosh Colony in the Gulbahar police precincts and his body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.
Another man was killed in Baldia Town by unidentified culprits, whereas police found a man’s body in a gunny bag in the Preedy police precincts.
