![]() Pakistani protesters throw stones towards the police during a protest against the killing of tribal chief Nawab Akbar Bugti, in Karachi. New riots erupted in Pakistan's troubled Baluchistan province injuring eight people, as anger continued over the killing of a prominent rebel chief in a military operation.
(AFP) |
New riots erupted in Pakistan's troubled Baluchistan province injuring eight people, as anger continued over the killing of a prominent rebel chief in a military operation.
Police fired bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to disperse rioters protesting at death of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a powerful local leader who had been leading a tribal insurgency in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, officials said Monday.
At least eight people were injured in the riots in the remote coastal town of Pasni, southwest of the provincial capital Quetta, police official Hidayatullah told AFP.
Police charged protestors and then fired into the air to quell the mob which sparked a shootout, he said.
Eight men were taken to a government hospital in Pasni with bullet wounds but their injuries were not life threatening, said Ata Mohammad, a doctor at the hospital.
Rioters ransacked two banks and a national airline office, and damaged shops and private property belonging to settlers, as well as beating ethnic Punjabi residents, Hidayatullah said. He added that coast guards had been called in to help control the situation.
Unknown men murdered a barber at his home in Nasuhki district early Monday, police official Waheed-ur Rehman told AFP. He said 10 other barber shops mainly run by Punjabi settlers were destroyed by a mob late Sunday.
The latest unrest came after a call for a general strike in Baluchistan province over the killing of Bugti.
"There is a complete strike in Baluchistan," Baluch National Alliance leader Hasil Bizenjo told AFP on Monday. He said the people had registered their "strong protest" over Bugti's death.
Shops were closed in southern Karachi city's Baluch-populated areas, where youths burnt tyres and pelted vehicles with stones, residents said.
Police said more than 500 people have been detained so far, including 115 held on Monday.
Police also detained three nationalist lawmakers for "inciting" shopkeepers to close for the strike, which came a day after widespread violence that left three people dead and saw hundreds arrested.
In Sunday's clashes in Baluchistan demonstrators torched buses and buildings, exchanged fire with police and set off a bomb at a government office.
Bugti had been leading a violent struggle against the central government of President Pervez Musharraf over the region's natural resources. He was killed in a military strike on Saturday.
At least seven soldiers and 17 tribal insurgents were killed in the fighting that led to the death of Bugti, a colourful British-educated tribal chieftain who was in his 80s.
Baluchistan has been rocked by a near two-year insurgency blamed on autonomy-seeking tribesmen who also want a greater share of the gas-rich province's natural resources.
Officials say hundreds of people have died in the unrest that erupted in late 2004 and which has seen a series of attacks on gas pipelines, railway tracks and government installations.
Information Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani said Bugti had not been targeted but that he had been killed "as a result of an encounter which took place due to the resistance against the state."
The minister said at least 17 insurgents and seven security personnel were killed in the operation.
The four-party Baluch alliance announced it would hold special prayers for Bugti at local football ground on Tuesday.