KARACHI- After a lull of hardly a week, Malir and Landhi areas where again in the grip of organised bloodbath on Friday as unidentified attackers claimed 14 lives and wounded another 22 while two houses were also set on fire in Karachi.
Police surgeon Dr Hamid Padhyar told that 10 bodies and 15 injured were shifted to JPMC, 2 dead bodies were shifted to Sindh Government Hospital, Malir and one body and four injured were brought to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. The deceased were identified as Niaz Muhammad, Muhammad Ibrahim, Akram, Akbar Ali, Naseer Ahmed, Azeem, Jamshaid, Nadeem, Murtaza, Iqbal, Ikram, Khalid and Shafique, Nabi Khan and one unidentified person.
Eyewitnesses said over a hundred gunmen equipped with sophisticated weapons and walkie-talkies barged into different areas of Malir and Landhi and resorted to firing at different locations dominated by Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).
The police high ups termed the incident as a clash between the rival organisation, MQM and Muhajir Qaumi Movement-Haqqiqi (MQM-H), but MQM workers and residents asserted that it was a planned attack and that most of the attackers were Balcohs and Pushtoons.
Police sources said that two activists of Awami National Party (ANP), Mustaqeem and Akram Khan, were killed in Landhi and Quaidabad areas while an MQM-H activist Iqbal alias Ballo was also gunned down in the Quaidabd area.
Eyewitnesses said that assailants, who were thought to be Layari gangsters, came on expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles including double-cabin Parados and motorbikes. They entered the Ghazi Town and Aleemabad areas of Malir after the dawn prayers.
“We believe the attack was an attempt to let the MQM Haqqiqi capture the MQM offices and dominate the area,” said a girl who reached JPMC along with his brother injured during the ambush. She said, “We saw armed men having guns and walkie-talkies showering bullets on the houses of MQM workers and offices.” She said the attackers appeared to be mostly Balochs, Pushtoons while some of them were Urdu speaking.
The attackers were moving forward to different areas of Malir and targeting MQM Unit and Sector Offices and killing people without any discrimination on the way. She said, “We believe it was an attack by MQM-H with the help of Baloch gangsters of Layari to regain the control of the area ahead of the arrival of detained Haqqiqi leader Afaq Ahmed.”
After an attack at MQM Unit 100 Office located in Aleemabad, the armed convey moved toward other areas of Malir including Khokhrapar, Saudabad, Ammar Yasir Society and the adjacent areas where they killed men standing outside their homes.
Some residents said that armed men came from slum areas of Malir and got back to the slums after the attacks. They spent the night in different Goths situated in the surrounding areas of Malir such as Bahoo Goth, Asoo Goth, Jhokio Goth and barged into Malir at around 6:30am.
They said the attackers also attacked the houses of MQM workers and killed some MQM workers including Nadeem, Niaz, Naseer and Azeem in the early stage of the attack. Another MQM worker Salman Ahmed was shot dead near Ajmair Tower in the Gulshan-e-Mamar.
The MQM Unit Offices attacked included those numbered 94, 95, 96, 97, 98 and 100 where gunmen stayed for around two to three hours and exchanged fire with MQM workers, who were backed the residents, till the arrival of law enforcers at around 11am. They fled the areas on arrival of the law enforcement agencies, but stayed in Jhokio Goth till the evening. Residents alleged that they pinpointed to the police and Rangers about the locations of the terrorists but they were reluctant to take any action.
Similar ambush began in the Landhi area where armed men also forced their entry into the MQM dominated areas and tired to capture the MQM Unit 89. But the attackers met heavy resistance from the MQM workers and three of them were wounded who died on the way to hospital.