ISLAMABAD, 10 September 2005 — The opposition called nationwide strike yesterday failed to muster popular support as the response was low key, sources said.

The muted response to the strike once again made clear that the opposition is presently not in a position to mobilize mass support against President Musharraf’s government.

An alliance of Islamic and secular parties had given strike call to protest a rise in petrol prices, recent talks between Pakistan and Israel and a crackdown on religious schools by Musharraf. These groups demand Musharraf to step down.

Police detained 100 opposition activists as part of stepped-up security yesterday.

Public transport was affected in some areas with fewer of the country’s overcrowded buses plying the roads, however most businesses in Islamabad, Krachi and Lahore were open.

However, in some other cities, owners shut their shops to heed the strike call by six radical groups and Pakistan’s main opposition coalition, Alliance for Restoration of Democracy. But the strike was not likely to unsettle Musharraf, who has weathered many such protests.

Musharraf said the strike was a failure.

“The strike is fizzling out as I have thought,” he said. “They have no support,” he said of a coalition of the six Islamic groups that has been a vocal opponent of him.

Earlier, opposition lawmakers chanted slogans against Musharraf and walked out of the National Assembly in Islamabad.

“We are running this movement, so that the system of military dictatorship is ended in the country,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the Islamic alliance, United Action Forum.

Police detained the 34 people who tried to stage a demonstration in a central square in Multan, a major city in the eastern Punjab province, and accused them of disturbing the peace, local police official Munir Ahmed Chishti said. But no one was formally arrested or charged immediately.

Many shops and other businesses were closed in the cities of Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta, but public transport was operating normally in the cities except for Quetta — where public vehicles kept off the streets.

Authorities said bomb blasts late Thursday that injured eight people at KFC and McDonald’s restaurants in Karachi, might have been linked to the strike. Rauf Siddiqui, interior minister of Sindh, said the explosions were linked to the strike called by opposition parties yesterday, but the opposition denied any involvement.

“Eight people were injured, mainly by flying glass,” Siddiqui said.

The first explosion happened in the KFC in Karachi’s Defense district at around 12:40 a.m., injuring a number of people including a baby girl and her family.

The second blast happened behind the kitchen at a crowded McDonald’s kiosk around two kilometers on the Karachi seafront.

— Additional input from AP.