Ethnic violence erupts in Karachi

Ethnic violence erupts in Karachi

At least 20 people have been killed and 24 others injured in clashes in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, local hospital officials say.

Waseem Ahmed, the city police chief, said the clashes on Wednesday were the result of a dispute between the city's ethnic groups Mohajirs and Pashtuns.
Violence erupted in different parts of the port city after an unidentified man opened fire in a Mohajir neighborhood in the centre of the city.
Officials from two major hospitals in the city said they had received 10 bodies each of people shot in the riots.
Dozens of cars and several shops were burnt in the riots.
Al Jazeera's Sohail Rahman, reporting from Islamabad, said two supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a party generally representing the Mohajirs, had been found shot in the northern suburbs.
"There has been indiscriminate firing in the northern suburbs of the city with six police officers wounded," he said.
"It is very unsure how the police will be able to respond to the violence."
Karachi, Pakistan's financial capital, has a long history of ethnic, religious and sectarian violence but has been relatively peaceful in recent years.
The city is dominated by Mohajirs, Urdu-speaking people who migrated from India after Pakistan was created in 1947, but there is also a sizeable population of ethnic Pashtuns.
PHOTO CAPTION
Pakistani residents pass a burning vehicle on a street in Karachi
Al-Jazeera
 

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