KARACHI, Pakistan ? Contentious remarks by a prominent politician sparked violence that killed 14 people in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi overnight and exacerbated the already precarious security situation, officials said Thursday.
Violence in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, has added to the political instability in the 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 fighting erupted after Zulfiqar Mirza, a senior member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, harshly criticized the head of a rival party. Mirza called Altaf Hussain, chief of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a murderer and an extortionist and also maligned the city's Urdu-speaking community that makes up the party's base.
Karachi echoed with gunfire soon after a local TV channel aired Mirza's comments. Angry mobs also torched more than a dozen vehicles.
Fourteen people were killed in the fighting, said Manzoor Wasan, home minister in Sindh province, where Karachi is the capital. Authorities arrested more than 161 people and were trying to determine who was responsible for the violence.
"We are investigating who they are or which party they belong to," said Wasan.
Mirza apologized for his comments Thursday, calling members of the Urdu-speaking community his "brothers."
"We have lived together and always will so," said a faxed statement that the Sindh government said was from Mirza. "If my statement hurt anyone, I tender my apology."
Mirza is a senior minister in the Sindh government.
Karachi has a long history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence, and much of the fighting is blamed on gangs allegedly affiliated with the city's main political parties.
But even by Karachi's standards, the recent bout of violence has been extraordinary. More than 100 people have been killed in political and ethnic violence in the past two weeks.
The recent fighting followed a decision in late June by the MQM, the city's most powerful party, to leave the federal coalition led by the People's Party and join the opposition.
Life came to a grinding halt in Karachi on Thursday as traffic stayed off the road and all markets and shopping centers in the city remained closed.
Thousands of people rallied in the center of the city to condemn Mirza's comments and burned more than a dozen effigies of the politician to show their anger.
"Our ancestors sacrificed their lives, in the hundreds of thousands, and we are being abused by a person who is a robber and murderer himself," said protester Shabir Ahmed.
Hundreds of people also streamed toward the neighborhood where Mirza lives, but police cordoned off the area to prevent potential problems.
A large number of MQM's supporters are Urdu-speaking descendants of those people who came to Karachi from India soon after the birth of Pakistan in 1947. The party dominates politics in urban areas of Sindh, including Karachi, but over time it has seen challenges to its power from the People's Party and the Awami National Party, a Pashtun nationalist party.
There have been at least 490 political, ethnic and sectarian killings in Karachi during the first half of the year, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
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