Pakistan Party Calls Strike Over 4 Deaths
- Share via
KARACHI, Pakistan — The Mohajir National Movement called Tuesday for a general strike in the southern province of Sindh on Thursday to protest what it called the murder of four detained activists by police.
The ethnic party that dominates the violence-hit provincial capital of Karachi, the country’s commercial hub, issued a statement asking people to shut businesses and educational institutions Thursday.
Four detained party militants and two policemen were among 16 people killed in a surge of violence in Karachi overnight and Tuesday, officials said.
Interior Minister Nasirullah Khan Babar told a news conference that a well-known party activist, Fahim Farooqi, alias Fahim Commando, and three other militants died in a hail of fire from party gunmen hiding in a house in Karachi’s Nazimabad district.
But a statement issued by the party, known by the acronym MQM, said the four were taken out of jail and “murdered by police,” and it denied a police statement that they had been taken to the place to pinpoint an MQM hide-out.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
Eighteen months after the Eaton and Palisades Fires, survivors are rebuilding — not alone, but together. On Poppyfields Drive in Altadena, Whitney Haggins and at least 6 of her neighbors are leading the way.
Today we discuss one of the pivotal events of the 1960s: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Though the gunman was caught at the scene, confessed at trial, and even bragged about the shooting, his motives have largely been forgotten.
Modern LA earned its first smoggy nickname 450 years ago, as the “bay of smokes.” At the La Brea tar pits, we take a short walk through a long history with curator Regan Dunn, who explains how and why the first Angelenos would have set fires that filled the broad bowl of LA and foretold the curse of smog.
