Strikes paralyse Pakistan amid more violence

PAKISTAN: Strikes called by opposition parties brought Karachi and other cities to a standstill as gunmen killed a top court official in continued violence over the suspension of Pakistan's top judge.

Shops and schools were closed and most public transport remained off the streets in Karachi, a southern commercial hub where nearly 40 people were killed at the weekend in clashes between rival political supporters.

The violence erupted in the port city after pro-government parties blocked a public rally by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry following his suspension on March 9 by President Pervez Musharraf.

"Karachi is completely shut down and at least three-quarters of all businesses have closed across the rest of the country," a senior government official monitoring the strike told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Authorities in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest metropolis with a population of more than 12 million people, said in a statement they had declared a public holiday to mourn the recent deaths.

Police said they found the bullet-riddled body of a man in a bloodstained sack but there were no other reports of casualties.

Police fired tear gas shells after supporters of former premier Benazir Bhutto, chanting anti-Musharraf slogans, pelted security forces with stones and fired in the air, police said.

No one was injured, he said adding that the "situation is under control." Sindh province interior secretary Brigadier Ghulam Muhammad Muhtaram said authorities intended to expel some opposition leaders from the city, although names have not been finalised.

Most of the eastern city of Lahore was also shut down by the strike while lawyers boycotted courts, witnesses said.

Around 2,500 protesters in Lahore hanged and burned effigies of Musharraf and of Altaf Hussain, the exiled leader of the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement which was involved in the Karachi clashes.

The strike also paralysed North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan and 2,000 demonstrators rallied in the provincial capital Peshawar, witnesses and officials said. In Islamabad, gunmen broke into the house of Syed Hamad Raza, the deputy registrar of Pakistan's Supreme Court, and shot him dead early Monday in what his family said was a killing linked to his role at the court.

His brother Khalid Ali Shah dismissed initial police reports he was killed by robbers. "It was a targeted killing, it was not a robbery... We need justice," he said.

Chaudhry visited the dead man's relatives on Monday.

Security officials said Chaudhry had brought Raza to Islamabad with him from the southwestern city of Quetta after he was appointed to lead the Supreme Court in 2005.

Meanwhile a Supreme Court hearing into misconduct charges against Chaudhry was postponed shortly after it began when one judge stepped down, suggesting there could be a risk of bias due to "seniority issues."

Karachi, Tuesday, AFP.

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Suicide bomber kills 25 in Pakistan

PAKISTAN: A suicide bomber with a warning to alleged US spies taped to his leg attacked a hotel in northwest Pakistan Tuesday, killing 25 people and deepening instability in the strife-torn nation.

Militant sources said the attack in Peshawar could be a backlash against the recent killing in Afghanistan of Mullah Dadullah, amid reports the son of the Taliban military commander was seized at the hotel last week.

The powerful blast badly damaged the three-storey Marhaba Hotel, a popular haunt for Afghan refugees in this city near the border with Afghanistan, officials said. Provincial law minister Malik Zafar Azam said investigators found a message stuck to one of the bomber's severed legs that said in Pashto language:

(AFP)