Pakistan’s Cabinet Resigns in Wake of Fierce Ethnic Fighting in Karachi

The Pakistani Cabinet resigned Saturday in the aftermath of Karachi’s worst inter-communal riots that have left 184 people dead and hundreds injured in the country’s biggest city.

A government spokesman said Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo, who stays in office, would name a new Cabinet within a few days.

The resignation of all 22 federal ministers and 12 ministers of state occurred at the end of a detailed Cabinet debate on law and order after last week’s disturbances.

Meanwhile, a young boy was shot dead and another seriously injured when troops opened fire on curfew-breakers in the strife-torn port city, witnesses said.

Police also reported an exchange of fire between Pakistanis and Afghan Pushtuns after an explosion in a residential suburb. A 13-year-old Afghan boy was injured.

Pushtuns were involved in ferocious clashes last week with the rival Mohajir community of migrants from other parts of former British India who came to Pakistan after the 1947 partition into Pakistan and India.

The government has blamed drug dealers for inciting the riots, which broke out after a group of Pushtuns went on a spree of shooting, stabbing and burning in a Mohajir area.

The Pakistan administration has been fiercely criticized for failing to halt the growth of tensions between the two rival communities, as well as for its handling of the police search for drugs and guns that touched off the rioting.

Benazir Bhutto and other opposition leaders have demanded that Junejo and President Zia ul-Haq resign.

The curfew was relaxed Saturday in Karachi, a city of more than 7 million, as violence subsided. Traffic was a fraction of normal, and there was little public transportation.