PAKISTAN: KARACHI: PROTESTERS CLASH WITH POLICE

Описание: (18 May 2000) English/Nat

Rioting erupted twice in the Pakistani city of Karachi on Thursday, following the murder of two Sunni Muslim religious leaders.

The worst rioting broke out not long after the men's funerals.

More than a thousand people were on the streets.

The protesters seemed to be targeting government buildings.

The police responded with tear gas shells.

Reports suggested 15 to 20 people were injured.

The attack on the clerics took place earlier in the day.

Assailants on motorcycles ambushed a car filled with religious leaders - two were killed, two others were clerics injured.

One of the dead was Maulana Mohammed Yusuf Luthyanvi, the principal of a well-known religion school in the heart of Karachi.

His injured son, Mohammed Yahya Luithyanvi, was taken to hospital.

Abdur Rehman, a teacher, also was killed.

Soon after the attack, an estimated 400 students protesting the killings set a cinema on fire and burned tires and at least one car.

No one has taken responsibility for the attack.

It was the latest in a series of religiously motivated killings to rattle Pakistan in recent weeks.

Dozens of people have been killed in bloodletting involving rival Sunni and Shi-ite Muslims.

Previously, most of the victims had been Shi-ites, the minority Islamic sect in Sunni Muslim Pakistan.

Militant groups from both sects have surfaced in Pakistan in recent years and their members routinely clash.

Yet the overwhelming majority of Pakistan's 140 (M) million people live in harmony.

Pakistan's military-led government has promised to curb the sectarian violence and has threatened to shut down groups found to be involved in the killings.

But so far no action has been taken.

Police said the culprits in Thursday's killings escaped.

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