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One Killed As Violence, Strike Grip Pakistani Cities
KARACHI, May 28 (News Agencies) - One person was killed and about eight vehicles torched in fresh religious violence as a strike gripped the Pakistani commercial hub of Karachi, police said Monday.
Police said a shopkeeper died overnight Sunday when armed protestors from a Sunni Muslim party fired randomly in a central district of the southern city.
Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil said some eight vehicles were also set ablaze in the early hours of Monday. Witnesses in several areas said men were firing into the air, forcing merchants to close their shops.
All the major markets, schools and colleges were closed and most public transport was off the road as the Sunni Tehreek party enforced a strike to protest the murder of its leader, Salim Qadri, on May 18th.
Unidentified men, in the latest brutal religious murder to rock the troubled city, which is divided along various sectarian and ethnic lines, gunned down Qadri and five others.
Hundreds of people were detained in a huge police crackdown Sunday and paramilitary troops have been deployed throughout Sindh province to foil the Sunni Tehreek strike.
"I missed my examination paper as I was told to go back by some bearded people standing at the bus stop," said Batoo Haider, a college student from a suburb in southern Karachi.
Abbas Qadri, the acting leader of Sunni Tehreek, expressed satisfaction at the response to the strike.
"People have responded to our strike call and a curfew-like situation prevailed in all the major cities of the country despite the arrest of thousands of our workers," he said in a statement.
Reports from Hyderabad, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of Karachi, said a complete strike was also being observed there, with none of the major markets open and most transport off the road.
But in the most populous province of Punjab, residents in the capital Lahore said the strike had been ignored.
In the central Punjab district of Okara more than 100 Tehreek supporters blocked a highway to protest against the authorities' failure to arrest the killers.
Witnesses said the mob burnt tires and shouted slogans against the government, but they were dispersed after about one hour and the highway was reopened.
Police said Qadri's murder could be linked to his group's differences with other Sunni Muslim organizations, especially those from the Deobandi school.
The party, founded by Qadri in the early 1990s, represents followers of the majority Barelvi school of Pakistan's dominant Sunni community.
Karachi has a history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence, which has killed more than 4,000 people in the past five years.
Military ruler General Pervez Musharraf has vowed to crack down on the activities of religious fanatics but has backed down in the face of vocal opposition.
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