The Pakistan government issued “shoot-to-kill” orders on Friday, to tackle rioters, and called out the army as about 34 people died and dozens were injured in violent protests across the country against the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Protestors, most of them workers of Bhutto’s PPP, vandalised commercial properties and government offices, burnt trains and railways stations and clashed with police at many places. Much of their ire was directed against the offices and property of the ruling PML-Q party that backs President Musharraf.
Nine people, including a PML-Q leader, Asfandyar Amirzaib, were killed and several others injured in an explosion in Pakistan’s restive northwestern Swat valley. The paramilitary Pakistan Rangers were given “shoot-to-kill” orders to tackle protestors in Sindh province, a traditional stronghold of the PPP that witnessed the fiercest protests.
Provincial Home Secretary Ghulam Mohammad Mohtaram said 23 deaths were reported across Sindh.
Among the dead were four security officials and six people who suffocated when a bank was burnt in Khairpur, Mohtaram said. Six trains were damaged and “criminal elements” took advantage of the protests to loot commercial establishments and government treasuries, he said.
Officials said 200 bank branches across the country were burnt or damaged and some 300 prisoners escaped when three different jails were vandalised by protestors.