Scores Killed in Karachi Violence

At least 30 people died in overnight violence between rival ethnic groups and criminal gangs in Pakistan's financial capital of Karachi, police said Thursday.

A former MP for the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Waja Karimdad, was among those killed in the fresh wave of violence in Karachi, where hundreds of additional police and paramilitary troops were deployed last month.

Spiraling unrest is a major source of concern in Pakistan's biggest city, which is used by NATO to ship the bulk of its supplies to troops fighting in Afghanistan and which accounts for around a fifth of the country's GDP.

The violence has been linked to ethnic tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun migrants affiliated to the Awami National Party (ANP).

Karachi, currently a city of 18 million and the economic powerhouse of the country, has seen its population explode since independence in 1947.

Its neighborhoods have been swollen by a huge influx of migrants from across the country, but particularly the deprived, Pashtun northwest, looking for jobs and more recently to escape Taliban and al-Qaida-linked violence.

"Thirty people have been killed in different areas of Karachi including Lyari during the past 24 hours," a senior security official told Agence France Presse.

Most of the killings have been reported in the southern Lyari neighborhood, a PPP stronghold infested by powerful criminal gangs.

"The situation is still very tense in Lyari and other areas of southern Karachi with sporadic gunfire being echoed around these neighborhoods," the official said, blaming criminal gangs for the fresh outbreak of violence.

A senior health official also confirmed the toll and said that 30 bodies had been brought to different city hospitals.

Karachi's worst-affected areas are impoverished and heavily populated neighborhoods where most of the criminal gangs are believed to be hiding.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 800 people have been killed in Karachi so far this year, compared with 748 in 2010.