KARACHI, Pakistan — Pakistani forces regained control Saturday of trouble spots in the nation’s largest city, where five days of political and ethnic violence killed 93 people and forced many to stay at home in fear, an official said.
The fighting in Karachi, a sprawling southern port city of 18 million people, has added to the political instability in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied nation and provided another distraction for the government as it fights a Taliban-led insurgent movement. It also undercuts the country’s struggling economy because Karachi is its main commercial hub.
The latest spell of violence is extraordinary even by the standards of Karachi, a city that routinely witnesses more than 1,000 violent deaths a year, many of them targeted killings linked to political, ethnic and sectarian rivalries.
It follows the decision by the city’s most powerful political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, to leave the federal ruling coalition and join the opposition. Such moves by the MQM have traditionally been accompanied by outbursts of fighting.
The fighting in some areas got so bad that security forces were ordered to shoot gunmen on sight Friday.
“Four or five homes were burned in our own street, and so badly that no one could put the fire out. And whenever someone tried to do so, there was a shootout,” said Mohammad Kashif, who spent much of the week holed up in his house.
By Saturday evening, authorities said more than 150 suspects were detained and paramilitary Rangers and other security units had brought the violence under “complete control.”
“The Rangers have completely taken over the affected areas, and the miscreants have been swept out,” said Maj. Farooq Bilal, a Rangers spokesman.
Many of the killings, which began Tuesday, appeared linked to political and ethnic turf battles, officials said. Some of Karachi’s leading political parties have been formed along ethnic lines, though all deny targeting one another’s activists.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said those behind the attacks were ultimately helping the Taliban, who want “mass killings” and “destabilization.”
