KARACHI, 5 October 2003 — Pakistani police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry Shiite mourners who went on the rampage in the southern city of Karachi yesterday, a day after six Shiites were killed in an attack on a bus.
“We will avenge the killings,” shouted the crowd of about 1,000 mourners during a funeral procession for one of the six people killed in the Friday attack.
Two or three gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire with automatic weapons on a bus carrying Shiites to a mosque for Friday prayers, killing five on the spot. A sixth man died in hospital. Eight people were wounded.
No group claimed responsibility but police blame Sunni militants for most of the sectarian bloodletting in Pakistan.
Yesterday young men and boys burnt tires to block a main road and side lanes in Karachi’s central district, threw stones at cars and motorcycles and damaged police vehicles, a police post and petrol stations.
Witnesses said some of the protesters suffered minor injuries in scuffles with police, who struggled to control the crowd.
Police said they had detained at least eight people. “The situation is now under control,” city police chief Tariq Jamil told Reuters.
Most of the dead and wounded in the Friday attack were employees of Pakistan’s Space & Upper Atmospheric Research Commission, using a company bus.
Hundreds of people, most of them minority Shiites, have been killed in sectarian violence in Pakistan in recent years.
At least 57 Shiite worshipers were killed in July in an attack on a mosque in the southwestern city of Quetta.
