Two dozen dead in Bhutto protests

Protests erupted in Pakistan for a second day on Friday after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and the violence was worst in her home province in the south.

Officials said 24 people, including four policemen, had died since former prime minister Bhutto was murdered on Thursday in a gun and bomb attack after an election rally in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.

The violence intensified on Friday into some of the worst political disturbances in years in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

All but one of the dead were killed in Sindh province in the south, Bhutto's home province and her main base of support.

Particularly hard hit was Hyderabad city where troops were called out to restore calm after an order to police to shoot violent protesters on sight failed to quell the trouble.

"The army is being moved into the city but there's no decision on imposing a curfew," said provincial interior ministry secretary Ghulam Mohtaram.

Officials had said they feared the disturbances would intensify after Bhutto's funeral at her family's ancestral home in the province on Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, in an apparent militant attack, a bomb at an election meeting in the country's troubled northwest killed six people including a candidate in January polls for the party that supports President Pervez Musharraf, police said.

Islamist militants, probably linked to al Qaeda, top the list of suspects for Bhutto's murder.

In Hyderabad, police and witnesses said protesters had set fire to about 25 banks, 100 vehicles and foreign fast-food outlets. Several train coaches were also torched.

"A LOT OF DAMAGE"

The streets of Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and its commercial capital, were largely deserted with shops shuttered and paramilitary troops and police patrolling.

In the east of the city, more than 2,000 people attacked a police station and set it on fire. They stole some weapons and torched cars outside, police said.

"Since last night a lot of damage has been caused. Shops, cars and government buildings are being burnt," said senior Karachi police official Azhar Ali Farooqi.

Fires also blazed across the interior of Sindh.

A Reuters reporter traveling from Karachi to the Bhuttos' home district of Larkana, where Bhutto was buried, said he saw hundreds of smoldering vehicles and many shops on fire.

Protesters shouted slogans against Musharraf, Bhutto's old rival.

Musharraf condemned Bhutto's killing, appealed for calm and declared three days of mourning. Banks and schools were closed across the country.

Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader and former prime minister, had called for a nationwide strike on Friday.

Violence broke out in Pakistan's other provinces and one person was killed in the eastern city of Lahore, police said.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar two offices of pro-Musharraf political parties were torched, a witness said.

Protesters in the southwestern province of Baluchistan set fire to a railway station, several banks, government vehicles and offices of a pro-Musharraf party, police said.

In the city of Multan in Punjab province, a crowd damaged seven banks and torched eight petrol stations. Protesters took to the streets of Muzaffarabad in Pakistani Kashmir.

In the Swat valley, where the army has been fighting pro-Taliban militants, a blast at an election meeting of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party killed six people including a party candidate in the polls, police said.

Reuters
 

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