PAKISTAN: Violence breaks out across Sindh Province just days after Bhutto's assassination

Record ID: 376605

  • Title: PAKISTAN: Violence breaks out across Sindh Province just days after Bhutto's assassination
  • Date: 29th December 2007
  • Summary: CHILDREN BEATING BURNT CARS WITH A STICK
  • Embargoed: 13th January 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA69CHBVTMR50PTMQLGA71THGJA
  • Story Text: Violence breaks out across Sindh Province as locals say they want an end to countrywide protests as Pakistan battles to bounce back from its latest crisis -- the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
    Violence flared across Pakistan on Friday (December 28) and Saturday (December 29), following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
    Troops were called out on Friday to quell some of Pakistan's worst political violence in years, sparked by Bhutto's death.
    Officials said 31 people, including four policemen, had been killed since she was murdered on Thursday in a bomb attack after an election rally.
    Most of the dead were killed in Sindh in the south, Bhutto's home province and main power base.
    Bhutto was killed by a suicide attacker on Thursday (December 27) after a rally in Rawalpindi, and was buried on Friday in her family mausoleum in the province of Sindh in a town near to Larkana.
    Troops were deployed in several parts of Sindh, including Larkana, officials said, and banks and schools were closed across the country.
    Several train coaches were also torched.
    Violence also flared across other cities in Sindh province, like Dadu, where several vehicles and buildings were torched.
    Government offices in Peshawar were also ransacked and police scuffled with protesters.
    And in the city of Quetta, things came to a standstill with shops and other businesses shut down and streets left deserted.
    In the city of Hyderabad, police and witnesses said protesters had set fire to about 25 banks, to 100 vehicles and to foreign fast-food outlets, despite orders to the police and paramilitary forces to shoot violent protesters on sight.
    Streets in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad and commercial hub, Karachi were also empty on Saturday morning, as the country continued to mourn Bhutto's death.
    Residents in Karachi said protests and the ransacking of public property should be put to an end.

    "They have the right to protest but the way they do it -- arson, hurling stones, damaging property, is wrong," said Akram, a resident of Karachi.
    Many agreed that protesters only aggravated the situation.

    "The petrol stations and vehicles are being burned. Whose loss is this? The loss to people," said Sayal Khan, another resident of Karachi.
    Muhammad Bashir, a taxi driver in Islamabad, said protests should immediately be banned because they cause severe losses to the country.

    "These protests are dangerous both for the country and the nation.
    This is inflicting losses to the poor people and this should not be happening," said Bashir.
    The death of 54-year old Bhutto has stunned people all over the country and prayers for her were held by small groups of people in various cities all over the country.
    While some agreed to the prayer groups, most were adamant that protests should not be allowed.

    "These should not be held and they are wrong. It is our own as well as the country's loss," said a religious school student, Muhammad Umer Farooq.
    On Saturday, dozens of police stood guard behind barbed wire barriers erected on the roads in Islamabad leading to the presidential house and parliament house.
    President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999 and hopes to remain president despite leaving the army last month, has appealed for calm and blamed Islamist militants for the killing.
    But many accused him of failing to protect Bhutto, who died in the city of Rawalpindi, home of the Pakistani army.
    Bhutto, who became the Muslim world's first democratically elected woman prime minister in 1988, was buried alongside her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was hanged in 1979 after being deposed by a military coup.
    Bhutto escaped unhurt from a suicide attack in October that killed about 140 people. The government said al Qaeda was also behind that attack.
    ENDS.
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