By IANS,
Islamabad : The Pakistan Supreme Court was Monday told by police that a total of 306 people were killed in ethnic violence within one month in the country’s southern port city of Karachi.
The police chief of southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, presented a report before a five-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry of the Supreme Court, which listed deaths and other details of violence between July 24 and Aug 24, Xinhua reported.
Inspector General of Police Wajid Durrani in his report said that more than one ethnic group were involved in the recent violence in the city of 18 million population.
On a question from the chief justice, the police chief said that 17 bodies were found in bags, of which eight people’s throats were found slashed.
Durrani said there were several areas in the city commonly termed “no-go areas” where police and the general public could not freely move because a dominant group often blocks the entry.
Durrani told the court 32,000 policemen were performing duties in areas under 112 police stations in the city.
In the report, he said a total of 78 vehicles were torched and rival groups clashed at least 146 times. The police arrested 20 target killers in a month’s time.
The chief justice has also sought reports from intelligency agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the military intelligence by Tuesday.