Gunmen Fire on Pakistani Crowds, Kill 21

Gunmen with automatic weapons fired on two Sunni Muslim crowds Sunday, killing at least 21 people and wounding 26 in a burst of sectarian violence in this troubled city.

It was one of Pakistan’s bloodiest days in recent years and raised questions about whether Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s government can control the streets of the nation’s biggest metropolis.

Police said they suspected Shiite Muslims carried out Sunday’s attacks in retaliation for a series of Saturday night shootings in Karachi that left 12 men dead, most of them Shiites.

The increasingly bitter Sunni-Shiite feud is one of several running battles in Karachi, a city of 10 million convulsed by ethnic, political and religious violence in recent years.

In the first attack Sunday, four gunmen in a car sprayed bullets at people near a street stall set up by Harakat-ul-Ansar, a group of Sunni religious students, police said.

Twelve people were killed, including a 12-year-old boy, and 13 were wounded, several of them seriously.

Harakat-ul-Ansar hasn’t been involved in previous sectarian violence, raising the possibility that the gunmen were simply targeting Sunnis.

Several hours later, there was a second drive-by shooting, this time outside a mosque where Sunnis were praying. Nine men were killed and 13 wounded, police said.

All of the weekend attacks took place in central Karachi, the frequent scene of recent gun battles.

The violence clouded what was supposed to be a peaceful day of protest.

Bhutto had called a nationwide strike Sunday to show solidarity with Muslims seeking to secede from India in the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir. There were rallies in all major cities. In Karachi, more than 1,000 people marched.

India, a mostly Hindu nation, controls the southern two-thirds of Kashmir, where Muslims are in the majority. Pakistan holds the remaining third. Both countries claim the territory and have fought two wars over it.