Troops deployed after Shiite politician killed in Pakistan

by Maaz Khan

QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP) – Paramilitary troops were Monday deployed in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta to quell violent protests against the killing of a Shiite Muslim politician, police said.

Gunmen riding on a motorbike shot dead Ghulam Hassan Yousufi, a prominent Shiite figure, in an attack claimed by a banned Sunni extremist group.

"The Frontier Corps (FC) has been called to assist local police control the law and order situation," senior police official Wazir Khan Nasir told AFP.

He said police were questioning at least 18 people arrested for suspected links to the assassins following the second sectarian attack in Quetta in less than two weeks.

The FC fanned out across the city centre after hundreds of protesters took to the streets and turned violent, setting ablaze vehicles and smashing the windows of a bank in the main boulevard where Yousufi was killed.

"Police launched tear gas shells and baton-charged the protesters in a bid to prevent any untoward incident and disperse them," Nasir said.

At least 12 people were wounded, seven when protesters in the crowd opened fire, Nasir said.

"They are ordinary people injured from firing by the protesters," he said.

Residents said the situation was returning to normal as dusk fell. Shops remained closed, however, and traffic was thin in the city.

Monday's drive-by shooting took place on Jinnah road in Quetta, the capital of gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Yousufi, who led the Hazara Democratic Party, a predominantly Shiite movement, was shot as he got out of his car outside a travel agency and died on the way to hospital.

Hundreds of people blocked Jinnah road and burnt tires to protest against the killing, an AFP photographer said.

The banned Sunni extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) claimed responsibility for the killing in a telephone call to the local press club.

"We claim responsibility for this attack," said the caller, who identified himself as Ali Haider, an LJ spokesman.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been blamed for the killings of hundreds of Shiite Muslims since its emergence in the early 1990s.

Monday's shooting followed a sectarian attack on January 14, when unknown gunmen killed four policemen, three of them Shiites, on the outskirts of the city, sparking street protests.

Aside from the sectarian attacks involving Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremists, the province has been gripped by insurgency for four years.

Hundreds of people have died in insurgent violence in Baluchistan since late 2004, when rebels rose up demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.

The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Taliban militants.