KARACHI, Aug 28, Reuter: Pakistani Troops and police today detained political activists. After ‘extending a curfew imposed following ethni criotsin which more than 30 people have died officials said.

Police did not give any number for those arrested in the Karachi and Hyderabad raids, but political leaders in hiding told local newspapers that at least 30 leaders and activists were being held.

They said Fathers, Brothers or Mothers were arrested if police did not find the person they were seecking.

The raids were conducted early today after a curfew imposed on Karachi’s Faisal colony area on Wednesday was extended into fresh riot areas, covering more than half of this port city of seven million people.

Hundreds of troops in Battle dress and police entered the city’s hundreds of Mosques and made the curfew announcements through loudspeakers, warning the people “do not come out of your houses.”

‘Twenty-four people have died in Karachi since clashes between Pashtuns and Mohajir erupted on Wednesday. Eight were killed in the nearby city of Hyderabad, Where the rioting spread yesterday, hospital doctors said.

A Mohajir organization, The Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) asked its supporters to hold protests today in observing ‘what it called Black Day.

A spokesman for the MQM claimed today that at least 60 people were killed, more than 200 were wounded and about 150 shops and houses set ablaze in the riots. Police have not confirmed the figures.

Sharp rivalries have existed for 20 years between Pashtuns from the north: west frontier Province and Mohajirs, who migrated from the rest of former British India at its partition in 1947.

Police confirmed that hundreds of political leaders and activists had gone underground following the raids in the riot hit areas of Karachi and Hyderabad.

 The today ethnic riots, the worst since last December when more than 175 people were killed, flared up over the display of a pashtun flag in Faisal Colony, a predominantly Mohajir area.

‘Thousands of factories and shops were closed because of the riots industrialists said.

More than 350 people have been killed in ethnic violence between Pashtuns and) Mohajirs in the last 10 months in Karachi and Hyderabad.

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 4, 1987