ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Sunday imposed a curfew over parts of Karachi after at least 30 people were killed in a fresh wave of political violence in the city.
“A semi-curfew will be imposed in some areas of Karachi,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in a brief televised interview with reporters, after meeting top provincial officials in Karachi.
Malik did not explain what he meant by “semi-curfew”, but Sindh province home ministry spokesman Sharfuddin Memon told AFP “it is for the authorities to decide for how long they would like a troubled area to remain under curfew.”
Dozens of suspects linked to the killings have been rounded up, with extra police and paramilitary rangers deployed in Karachi’s trouble-prone western neighbourhoods.
“It is responsibility of the federal and provincial governments to protect the people,” Malik said, justifying the decision to impose the partial curfew, without disclosing which areas would be affected.
Malik also said, without elaborating, that there was “a third element trying to deteriorate the situation in Karachi.”
Among the people killed this week was Wali Khan Babar, a reporter for the private Geo television station, who was shot dead late Thursday in an attack condemned by journalists’ unions and civil society organisations. – AFP
