Pakistan city virtually shut down after strike call

Karachi, May 14: Shops were closed and public transport off the streets of Karachi today after nearly 40 people were killed and about 150 wounded in Pakistan's worst political street violence in two decades.

The authorities have banned demonstrations in the city and declared a public holiday. The opposition called for a protest strike.

The weekend violence began when Pakistan's suspended top judge tried to meet supporters in the southern city.

The government yesterday authorised paramilitary troops to shoot anyone involved in serious violence in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city that has a long history of bloody feuding between ethnic-based political factions.

City police chief Azhar Farooqi said security forces had stepped up patrols and the situation was under control. There had been no violence today although the city was very tense.

''The city is totally paralysed. Shops are closed and very little public transport is on the roads. People are scared,'' Farooqi told Reuters.

Government attempts to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry over unspecified accusations of misconduct on March 9 have outraged the judiciary and the opposition.

The judicial crisis has snowballed into a campaign against President Pervez Musharraf and is the most serious challenge to the authority of the president, who is also army chief, since he seized power in 1999.

But the violence has raised the spectre of the bloody feuding that plagued the city in the 1980s and 1990s.

The opposition is blaming the government and the pro-government Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which runs Karachi, for the violence.

The government says Chaudhry, who returned to Islamabad on Saturday without meeting his Karachi supporters, ignored appeals for him not to travel to the volatile city because of fears of violence.

Reuters

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