News
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
300 killed in Karachi in three months: HRCPKARACHI: Ethnic, sectarian and politically-linked violence in Pakistan's financial capital Karachi has claimed at least 300 lives so far this year, a human rights organisation said on Tuesday.
Parts of the city have become battlegrounds in the last week; with authorities unable to prevent spiralling violence blamed on activists from political parties representing competing ethnic groups. "About 300 people have been the victims of violent shootings in the last three months," Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Chairwoman Zahra Yusuf said.
The HRCP previously said 1,715 people were killed last year in sudden flare-ups of violence in the country’s most populous city. "The figures compiled by our staff and the death toll for the last three months confirmed by the police shows the number of victims of violence was not less than 300," she said.
The figures include the assassination of 49 political activists, while the rest of the victims were people with no political affiliations, the HRCP statement read.
The government has campaigned to end the clashes and deployed hundreds of additional police and paramilitary forces in the city, but the killings have continued with at least 24 people reported dead in the past week.
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. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk