Carnage In Pakistan: 45 People Gunned Down In Karachi In Revenge For Lawmaker's Assassination

Whoa. Today, 45 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi were killed as gunmen rampaged the city in an apparent revenge attack for the assassination of a lawmaker and his bodyguard inside of a Karachi mosque yesterday.

From the article at Breitbart:

Gunmen killed at least 45 people in Pakistan's largest city after the assassination of a prominent lawmaker set off a cycle of revenge attacks, officials said Tuesday. Dozens of vehicles and shops were set ablaze as security forces struggled to regain control of Karachi.

The latest unrest came after Raza Haider, a provincial lawmaker, was shot dead along with his bodyguard in a mosque while preparing to offer prayers Monday in Nazimabad area.

Haider was a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the political party that runs the city and represents mainly descendants of Urdu-speaking migrants from India who settled in Pakistan when it was created in 1947.

The MQM's main rival is the Awami National Party, a secular nationalist party whose main power center is Pakistan's northwest and whose base is the ethnic Pashtun community living in Karachi.

Within hours of Haider's assassination, gangs torched buildings in Karachi and gunfire erupted in several parts of the city. Many of the dead were killed in targeted, execution-style attacks, authorities said. An investigation had been ordered into who was behind the attacks.

Okay, now I know very little about the political party make up of this area of Pakistan and obviously, the report here has nothing in it about who was responsible for either the assassination or the subsequent revenge attack, but it's been my experience with this kind of thing, especially after covering the Iraq War for as long as I did, that this is the trademark of al Qaeda - not this revenge attack but the targeted assassination that would cause this kind of retaliation. It reminds me of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Iraq where al Qaeda in Iraq bombed a Shia mosque in the north in order to stir up retaliation by the Shias in southern Iraq.

Now, granted, the article points out these two rival political parties and that there is always the possibility that this was just that - a war between them but let's get real here...al Qaeda is the master of creating chaos and if they simply were to assassinate a single influential and popular lawmaker of one party, they could almost ensure a huge retaliation by the supporters of him - and that is exactly what happened.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if I'm right but in the meantime, it is just another reminder of the huge volatility of Pakistan...I don't know about you but the status of those nuclear weapons in Pakistan sure doesn't seem safe enough to me right now.

45 die in revenge attacks in Pakistan's Karachi


KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Gunmen killed at least 45 people in Pakistan's largest city after the assassination of a prominent lawmaker set off a cycle of revenge attacks, officials said Tuesday. Dozens of vehicles and shops were set ablaze as security forces struggled to regain control of Karachi.
Schools were closed and most business ground to a halt Tuesday in the southern city of more than 16 million, Pakistan's main commercial hub. While a thriving trading center, Karachi has a history of political, ethnic and religious violence and has long been a hide-out for al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

The latest unrest came after Raza Haider, a provincial lawmaker, was shot dead along with his bodyguard in a mosque while preparing to offer prayers Monday in Nazimabad area.

Haider was a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the political party that runs the city and represents mainly descendants of Urdu-speaking migrants from India who settled in Pakistan when it was created in 1947.

The MQM's main rival is the Awami National Party, a secular nationalist party whose main power center is Pakistan's northwest and whose base is the ethnic Pashtun community living in Karachi.

Within hours of Haider's assassination, gangs torched buildings in Karachi and gunfire erupted in several parts of the city. Many of the dead were killed in targeted, execution-style attacks, authorities said. An investigation had been ordered into who was behind the attacks.

Independent analysts say followers of all political parties in Karachi are heavily involved in criminal activities such as protection rackets and illegal land dealings. In certain neighborhoods, armed men linked to political parties stand guard at checkpoints.

Whil violence is still common, the city was far more dangerous in the 1980s and 1990s when there was regular outbreaks of political and ethnic slayings that left dozens dead each week.

Police surgeon Hamid Parhiar said that 45 people were killed and 93 people had been wounded, citing data from state-run hospitals in the city.

Sindh province spokesman Jamil Soomro said at least 10 people were arrested, and police and Army Rangers were dispatched throughout the city to impose order. But gunfire could still be heard Tuesday morning, and fires were still being set in some areas.

Schools and colleges in Karachi and other urban centers in the surrounding province were ordered to stay closed by the government Tuesday.

Officials did not say who was to blame for the violence.

"It is very sad, and we believe that it is the work of those forces who want to destabilize the elected government," Soomro said.