Mosque in Karachi attacked, death toll rises to 76 in three days

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Mosque in Karachi attacked, toll rises to 76
PAKISTAN - 5 AUGUST 2010

KARACHI: A hand-grenade attack inside a North Nazimabad mosque during prayers on Wednesday night left five people injured as the daylong violence which included arson attacks and incidents of firing claimed at least 22 more lives, raising the death toll to 76 in three days.

Police said at least two men in shirts and jeans and wearing helmets stopped their motorbike at the Sawari Masjid and Madressah Shams-ul-Uloom in Block N of North Nazimabad and one of them entered the premises.

“The Isha prayers were in progress when he hurled a hand grenade which exploded in the middle of the third row,” said an official at the Taimuria police station.

“The men escaped, leaving five people injured in the mosque. The injured were taken to the Abbassi Shaheed Hospital and their condition was said to be stable, he said.

Allama Maulana Ghulam Ahmed Siyalwi, a religious scholar and senior member of Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP), was among the injured. He is the patron-in-chief of the seminary attached to the mosque.

The JUP leadership, meanwhile, ruled out any ethnic motive behind the attack, but said they suspected it to be a message to the party which had sought intervention of the army and the chief justice for stopping the Karachi bloodshed.

“We believe that they are the same terrorists who have vitiated the city’s peace over the past three days and want to threaten the party, which only on Tuesday appealed to the army chief and the chief justice for action,” said Tariq Mahbood of the JUP.

Earlier in the day, panic and fear ruled the city as armed men carried out attacks in different areas and killed 22 people. The violence, which was sparked by killing of Muttahida Qaumi Movement MPA Raza Haider on Monday evening, claimed 76 lives by Wednesday night.

Qasba Colony and neighbouring Orangi Town emerged as the worst-affected areas where gunmen roamed freely. Police force and Rangers were nowhere to challenge them. A spokesman for the Edhi Foundation said the charity’s ambulance shifted more than 50 injured to different hospitals. Half of them were women and children who were hit by bullets while they were in their homes.

Similarly, there was no let-up in arson attacks. Three houses in Qasba Colony were set on fire in the early hours of the day. More than 30 shops of cellphones in Al-Falah of Saddar and a number of carpet showrooms in North Karachi met the same fate.

Nearly a dozen pushcarts parked on roadside in North Nazimabad and several shops in a shopping mall in Buffer Zone were also set ablaze.


Source: DAWN News

 

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Banned militant outfits destabilising Karachi: Malik
PAKISTAN - 4 AUGUST 2010

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik promised sustained ‘targeted actions’ against perceived terrorists in Karachi in a speech to the Senate on Tuesday as he seemed sure of links between two banned sectarian groups and Waziristan-based Taliban for violence in the country’s commercial capital.

Reporting to the upper house for the second time in as many days about the Karachi situation after the assassination of an MQM provincial legislator there on Monday, the minister said interrogation of a key suspect had revealed a ‘new nexus’ of Sipah-i-Sahaba and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi groups with Taliban based in South Waziristan and plans to kill politicians and ignite clashes between two political parties.

But despite these clues, he said, authorities were keeping an ‘open mind’ while a joint team of investigating agencies was working to fix responsibility for the shooting to death of Sindh assembly member Raza Haider and his police guard, which triggered more deadly overnight violence involving supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Awami National Party.

The minister thanked MQM chief Altaf Hussain and ANP president Asfandyar Wali Khan for counselling patience to their followers due to which, he said, the situation had been brought under control and there had been ‘no killing or burning’ after 4am on Tuesday.

“Now targeted actions are continuing in Karachi,” Mr Malik said and assured the house that the government would pull all its actions together to flush out Taliban ‘zaliman’ (oppressors).

Mr Malik said a suspected militant, Shakeel Burmi, who was arrested in October last year and allegedly linked with Sipah-i-Sahaba, had told interrogators about a plot to target three MQM leaders, including Raza Haider, and then send suicide bombers to attack funeral processions.

He said Shakeel had links with a Taliban leader he named as Qari Hussain of South Waziristan who he said had lived in Karachi for two and a half years.

The interior minister spoke after a second day of an inconclusive debate on flood havoc in the country which some opposition members used to launch what looked like a calculated campaign against President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to Britain on the day it was to begin and could not be put off as they wanted.

The criticism by three loyalists of former president Pervez Musharraf -- PML-Q’s Saleem Saifullah Khan, Mrs Semeen Siddiqui and Mrs Fauzia Fakharuzzaman Khan -- ranged from British Prime Minister David Cameron’s remarks in India last week about alleged promotion of terror export by Pakistan to perceived heavy expenses to be incurred on the trip.

While he did not refer to other aspects of the visit about which the foreign ministry had already spoken, Mr Malik rejected Mrs Siddiqui’s charge based on a press report that the president would stay at a very costly hotel at the expense of 10,000 pounds sterling for a night. He said Mr Zardari would be housed at a much cheaper hotel than the one used by General Musharraf on his British visits.

Deputy Chairman Jan Mohammad Jamali, who chaired the day’s sitting, referred the complaint of PML-Q’s Mohammad Ali Durrani about the alleged sale of government land and buildings in Bahawalpur at cheap prices to a committee on less-developed areas before adjourning the house until 5pm on Wednesday.


Source: DAWN News