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| India-Pakistan |
| At least six killed in fresh Karachi clashes |
| 2010-02-01 |
| [Dawn] At least six people, including a woman, were killed on Sunday in incidents of violence that has gripped Qasba Colony and neighbouring Orangi Town since Friday evening, police said. With the law-enforcers making little attempt to restore law and order, life remained paralysed for a second consecutive day on Sunday in Qasba Colony and adjoining areas as armed men virtually made the residents hostage. Police said that at around sunset, two armed men riding a motorbike intercepted a water tanker in Hariana Colony within the remit of the Mominabad police station and fired at the driver. The driver suffered fatal bullet wounds and lost control over the water tanker, which rammed into a moving auto-rickshaw. Mominabad SHO Shabbir Awan said that the driver, 25-year-old Noor Shah, died and the water tanker rammed into the rickshaw in which four persons, including two children, were travelling. "Eight-year-old Umair died on the spot while his younger brother sustained serious injuries. Both the attackers managed to escape after firing," said the SHO. The bullet-riddled body of the driver of a passenger coach was found in the vehicle in Orangi 11½, police said. They said the vehicle also had a badly injured conductor of Niaz Coach (PE 4213), which was left abandoned near the Nishan-i-Haider Chowk bus stop and spotted by area people. "The bullet wounds on the bodies of the victims seem fresh and it looks like that the victims were left abandoned. According to the criticially wounded conductor, they were kidnapped and killed elsewhere," said Sub-Inspector Umar Farooq, the SHO of the Pakistan Bazaar police station. "The name of the dead driver is not known yet, but he was in his late 30s while his 25-year-old conductor Khalid was seriously wounded. Both were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital." In another incident, unidentified assailants shot dead an elderly fruit vendor in the Paposh Nagar area in the early hours of Sunday. The police said the vendor, identified as 60-year-old Ameen Khan, was returning home after earning the day's bread when two men riding a motorbike targeted him near Rehmania Masjid in the area. "He was a resident of Khyber Mohalla in Nazimabad," said an official at the Paposh Nagar police post. "The body was shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for a post-mortem examination. He hailed from Kohat and was father of four children." Though guns fell silent as the night wore on in Pirabad, Qasba Colony, Kali Pahari and Banaras areas, with the sunrise on Sunday, the areas started to reverberate with rattle of gunfire that resulted in the killing of three persons. "A man, 25-year-old Raees Ali, was killed when he was hit by a bullet while passing through a road linking North Nazimabad with Qasba Colony," said Pirabad SHO Haider Masood. He said that an unidentified woman and another young man, Kashif, were also killed in firing incidents in parts of Qasba Colony. However, no details were available with regard to the three killings that occurred within the remit of the Pirabad police station. Also on Sunday, unidentified men set a parked bus on fire in Orangi Town. With little reaction from the political parties concerned, which lost no time in hurling allegations at unnamed groups "behind the recent wave of killings", and no extra measure from the government, the police authorities see de-weaponisation as the only remedy to curb such incidents. "The police are capable of making the de-weaponisation campaign a success," claimed Capital City Police Officer Waseem Ahmed. "The city is awash with illegal arms and there is a need to devise a mechanism for [launching] the de-weaponisation campaign." Former MQM-H man shot dead Unidentified assailants shot dead a former member of the Afaq Ahmed-led Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H) group within the remit of the New Karachi police station on Sunday. The police said that the incident occurred in the first half of the day near Nullah Stop. The victim, identified as 45-year-old Jalaluddin Sheikh, was standing outside an auto workshop when two men riding a motorbike spotted him and one of them fired at him with a TT pistol and fled. They said that the victim, a resident of New Karachi, was associated with the MQM-H until a few years ago. He was married and father of four children. |
| Posted by:Fred |