Security tight amid crackdown on violence

Security was tight across Pakistan yesterday, the Muslim day of prayer, when followers of a slain Sunni Muslim leader Maulana Azam Tariq staged a protest in the capital Islamabad and other cities.

In Islamabad, nearly two dozen mainly Islamic seminary students rallied angrily against Shiites outside a mosque.

They shouted 'Revenge, revenge' and 'Shiites infidels' as about 200 policemen in riot gear looked on. The demonstrators dispersed peacefully soon after.

"We have taken all precautionary measures," said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, director general at the Interior Ministry. He is also involved with the investigation into Tariq's death. In Punjab, where Tariq's movement was headquartered, authorities banned public demonstrations as a precaution.

In Lahore, protesters gathering after Friday prayers, and set fire to a van and pelted a Shia mosque. Minor skirmishes with Shiite worshippers took place, but these were controlled by a heavy contingent of police.

In Jhang, Tariq's home town, a police station was ransacked and mobs set alight several vehicles parked outside it. On the streets, one shop in a commercial area belonging to a Shiite was set alight, but the unrest was controlled within hours. Security forces were out in force yesterday. Most shops were closed in Jhang, said police chief Khadim Hussain Bhatti. Police commandos were patrolling the streets, but no violence was reported. SSP leaders at sermons in Jhang, however, warned of violence ahead if Tariq's killers were not apprehended within a week.

In the central city of Multan, armed policemen were searching cars for explosives and police took up position around mosques, said Hamid Mukhtiar Gondal, the chief of Multan district police.

Policemen in trucks with machine guns mounted on them were patrolling in Multan. Policemen on leave were called back to duty, Gondal said.

In the southern port city of Karachi, Pakistan's largest metropolis and the scene of past Shiite-Sunni violence, hundreds of plainclothes policemen and armed paramilitary troops, have been deployed outside mosques and other sites, said Tariq Jamil, the city police chief. Security was already tight in the city of 14 million after an attack on a bus in which six Shiites were killed last week, Jamil said.

Small groups of supporters belonging to a hardline Sunni group forced shops and businesses to shut in a few neighbourhoods of Karachi as they burned tyres and pelted stones on the traffic to protest the slaying of Tariq along with four accomplices.

Some of the militants belonging to the Millat-e-Islamia group also resorted to firing in the air with automatic weapons in Gulbahar area where their rally was pelted with stones by members of a rival faction.

Tension and sporadic incidents of violence soon spread to Pak Colony, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Haideri and Nagan Chowrangi areas where small groups of bearded militants many armed with sticks tried to damage public and private property.

"We closed our shop because there was a fear of attack," said Anwar Khan, a shopkeeper in North Karachi. But many shops reopened after the Friday prayers.