740 killed in Karachi in five months: HRCP

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Ethnic, sectarian and politically-linked violence in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi has killed at least 740 people so far this year, a human rights organisation said yesterday.
Parts of the port city have become battlegrounds, with authorities unable to prevent violence blamed on activists from political parties representing rival ethnic groups.
“About 740 people have been the victims of violent shootings in the last five months,” Zohra Yusuf, chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told this agency.
The HRCP said last year a total of 1,715 people were killed in violent flare-ups in the city, which is Pakistan’s biggest with an estimated population of 17 million.
The attacks often lead to punishing financial losses for Pakistan’s economy as swathes of Karachi go into lockdown, with residents fleeing the violence and shops and markets closing. “People are being killed with impunity by various ethnic groups while the government, it seems, has little control to put an end to it,” Yusuf said.
The figures include the assassination of 107 political activists, while the rest of the victims were people with no political affiliations, HRCP said. Much of the violence has been blamed on tensions between supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), rooted in the Urdu-speaking majority, and the Awami National Party (ANP), which represents ethnic Pashtun migrants.
NATO and the United States used Karachi to ship supplies for their war effort in landlocked Afghanistan, but Islamabad shut down the overland cross-border route after US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
Inescapable target killing claims four lives: At least four people were killed and seven others injured as a recent spree firing and target killing continued in Karachi yesterday (Tuesday), rescue sources said.
The sources revealed that unidentified men shot dead a CID head constable named Ali Hassan in PIB area while another man was gunned down in Baldia Town area of city.
They added that police have also found pieces of woman’s body stuffed in a gunny bag without head and legs from Surjani Town area.
Another tortured body of a man bundled in gunny bag found in Kalri area of Lyari. Rangers have also conducted raids near Aziz Jan Baloch’s house in Layri and arrested over a dozen suspects and recovered arms from their possession.

3 COMMENTS

  1. More than 700 people slaughtered on the streets of karachi and there is no resolution towards it. Our para military forces and police forces are incompetant to engulf themselves and fail to protect the public. Our politicians are always arguiing and insulting eachother therefore average citizen only understands a word of rage and death..This is not normal for a well governed country..but in Pakistan…everything is a go..!
    Pakistani politicians and the International Mafia of intelligence and spy network would never let peace come in karachi…period!

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