Lyari tense as operation enters day seven

Lyari tense as operation enters day seven

| 1 hour ago

Police officers take positions during a crackdown operation against criminals in Karachi’s Lyari area, April 30, 2012. — Photo by AP

KARACHI: The operation targeted against criminal elements in Karachi’s Lyari Town entered its seventh day on Thursday, DawnNews reported.
The locality remained tense and continued to portray the image of a battlefield.
At least eight people have been killed and 41 others, including six policemen, have been wounded during the past 24 hours in the ongoing violence in the locality.
Earlier on Wednesday, unidentified persons also ransacked the apartment of the Pakistan People’s Party lawmaker Rafique Engineer and then set fire to it. The attackers reportedly also burnt PPP flags.
Also on Wednesday, Ozair Baloch, on whose head the Sindh government has put a bounty, addressed a rally in the area and reiterated that the people of Lyari had no association with the PPP.
A strong contingent of police, the Frontier Constabulary and the Crime Investigation Department’s Anti-extremists Cell had launched the operation in the early hours of Friday (April 27) amid a high degree of tension caused by the April 26 killing of a key leader of the PPP’s local chapter in the area.