Police have been given orders to shoot gunmen on sight in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital, as authorities struggled to contain a four-day spate of violence in which more than 90 people have been killed.
The city of some 18m people is in the grip of one of its worst outbreaks of bloodshed in years, fuelled by a power struggle between rival political parties divided along ethnic lines.
“It’s much worse than I’ve seen in the last five years,” said one resident. “There are reports of rocket launchers being used. The streets are almost completely empty.”
The killings have posed a fresh challenge to the coalition government of Asif Ali Zardari, the president, and the city’s overstretched and outgunned police. The government said it was deploying 1,000 paramilitaries to provide back-up.
Gunmen have raked buses with gunfire, rampaged through slum neighbourhoods, and set fire to buildings, with police manning checkpoints largely powerless to intervene. A police source said more than 90 people had been killed since Tuesday.
Business ground to a halt in much of the city on Friday as transport workers went on strike and many shops remained shuttered as the crackle of gunfire rang out from side-streets.
“It’s very bad for all of us, it’s very traumatising,” said Seemin Jamali, who runs the casualty ward at the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre in Karachi. “It’s very depressing for us to see so many of our citizens dying like this.”
Ms Jamali said her emergency room had received nine victims of gunshot wounds on Friday, two of whom had died.
Police say privately that the killing is broadly carried out by armed gangs linked to two rival political parties – the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the dominant party in the city, and the rival Awami National party, which has gained an important foothold in Karachi in recent years. Activists from the ruling Pakistan People’s party are also believed to be involved.
The MQM draws much of its support from middle-class members of the Urdu-speaking Mohajir community, which arrived from India at Pakistan’s creation in 1947. The ANP largely represents a more recent influx of poorer Pashtun migrants from north-western areas near the border with Afghanistan.
Members of both communities have been targeted in the latest wave of tit-for-tat killings to rock the city, which has become increasingly polarised along ethnic lines.
The latest violence appears to be linked to last month’s decision by the MQM to quit the PPP-led ruling coalition. The MQM left in protest at the government’s decision to postpone elections in two seats in a regional assembly which it believed it would win.
“Every time something happens on the political level, immediately the city starts burning,” said Amber Alibhai, general secretary of Shehri, a group which campaigns for better urban planning. “The first fear when MQM left the coalition was that Karachi is going to disintegrate into violence.”
Some residents believe the MQM activists are fomenting violence against Pashtuns to underscore their dominant position in the city in spite of their party’s decision to withdraw from the ruling coalition.
Members of the MQM deny such allegations, and have in turn accused the PPP of seeking to punish them by giving a free hand to gunmen to attack Mohajirs.
“There have been numerous cases where these militants have opened fire in parts of Karachi and the police have casually watched,” said Nasreen Jalil, a senior member of the MQM. “There has been criminal neglect.”