Battleground Lyari: 20 dead as operation enters third day
The sound of gunshots echoed in the neighbourhoods of Lyari as the police combated heavily armed miscreants who confronted the police with rocket launchers and grenades. The police rounded off tens of wanted criminals during the operation.
Heavy firing continued on the third day in Cheel Chowk and Ghaas Mandi areas in particular. Three out of four armoured personnel carriers (APCs) were destroyed in attacks from gangsters since the operation began. However, police repaired them and started using them again.
The miscreants fired five rockets at police near Cheel Chowk and opened indiscriminate fire, which injured five including Express News cameraman Arif Ali. The injured have been shifted to a hospital.
The residents of Lyari, fearful of escalating violence and deprived of food, started migrating to safer places.
According to Senior Superintendent of Police Crime Investigation Department Chaudhry Aslam Khan, the police had covered almost 70% of the violence-hit areas of Lyari.
The Home Ministry of Sindh issued arrest warrant for Uzair Jan Baloch, a former chief of Peoples Amn Committee. Baloch announced earlier on Saturday that he was quitting the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in protest against the police action.
The police claimed that it will soon enter Baloch’s house to arrest him.
Advanced weapons to be used in operation
Meanwhile late Sunday night, it was decided that advanced weapons would be dispatched to police officials in Lyari. The decision was taken on a joint request made by Crime Investigation Department and Superintendent of Police (South), Express News reported.
Additional Inspector General has ordered South West Range DIG(s) to assist in this regard.
West Range has dispatched 15 Light Machine Guns (LMG), 50 G3 Rifles and a heavy round of ammunition, along with five armoured personnel carriers (APCs).
COMMENTS (20)
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Lyari operation started immediately when Uzair Baloch announce he will likely to join PMLN. Think again. Why Arshad Pappu gang is not targetteed. Why rangers refused to participate in the opearation.?
Its a dirty political game. Now he deserves to be 100%
Why only Lyari is being given blood-bath since so many days? The neutral respectables like Abdul Sattar Eidhi & others like him have been demanding an immediate end to "Lyari Operation". It means there is something fishy & wrong in this 'operation'. Seems only one community & one locality of Karachi has become target of the might of the State; (the community /locality of the sons of soil). Why the strongholds of MQM & other settler communities have not been touched is a Million Dollar question. For God's sake, stop this discrimination and take care of the real criminals, who sowed the seeds of criminality in once-peaceful city of Karachi, traditionally known to be 'Mother city for the poor'.
Hats off to the policemen for tackling these criminals. But the government should send in the army and deweaponze all these criminals there. That's why no one feels safe in Karachi compared to other cities in Pakistan.
In the end I am pretty sure that PPP will use this event against certain Ethnicity. Just like MQM's politics is based on an operation with the a theory that people from one region killed innocents and Bhutto did the same thing when he used regiments and battalions from Punjab to launch actions in Balochistan and this time as well they are using Officers from Punjab for action in Lyari and then after the operation PPP will benefit in a manner that they will say that Establishment of certain region want this operation and we intervened and protected Balochs of Lyari. For me this is a part of dirty politics. In the end I am sure just like MQM blamed Punjabis for operations in Karachi in a similar manner SSP Ch Aslam and his team will be blamed afterwards as PPP is a master in exploiting one region's force and then use this opportunity to garner votes. If they want to do the operation then why not use the Officers of Sindh and Balochistan rather using Officers from Punjab for thse operations and then blaming them in the end?????
i don't think our police is well equipment to handle this situation. What they need to do is to get a SSG unit in making them wear police clothes. this way the police moral would go up as well as the situation would end sooner.
You dont want military uniforms going into these areas.
Does our P.M. know this is happening or is this a provincial subject and does not deserve the same attention the P.M. gives to running dowm the Shareef brothers ?
Good job done by our brave policemen !!!
This is a turf war between Tapi. Z and Ayaz Baluch
In which country do we see all these things happenings and all in different areas, total collapse of institutions like police which should be accountable how this much weapon got there in the first place
SSP Ch. Aslam and his force is doing great service to the nation. Let's pray for their safety. They are our real Heroes.
Muslims killing muslims, we really dont need anyone from outside. shame. the forces need to pull back. When we can negotiate with Taliban, why not here?
its sad the amount of violence you need to bring peace :(
Rangers get massive money and benefits for sitting and watching. Are they only for killing criminals with fake guns?
It's amazingly quiet on these Comments areas lately. I used to see a large segment of commenters blame a single Karachi party for the mayhem in the City. Now, we are seeing a different picture. It is hard to imagine that three out of four Armoured Personal Carriers destroyed by these thugs in Lyari, and the number of grenades and rockets fired by them. Are these people new on the scene???? No, one can safely bet that they must have been operating on the streets for a number of years. So, apparently, a faction of PPP had been involved in these activities for quite some time. And, now with the prospects of elections on the horizon, the Government has decided to take care of the Karachi's problem, and this is what we are finding out. Former Sindh Interior Minister Zulfiqar Mirza has been the main benefactor of People's Aman Committee and had appeared on the TV alongside Uzair Jan Baloch. I have not seen the media trying to get his comments on the situation.
It's Cheel Chowk. You nabs!
I saw these recent encounters news coverage on news channels and i was shocked that in actual our police dont have adequate weapons and they dont have any binoculars and no equipment and i never saw any specialized Sniper among policemen as snipers are pretty important in operations to root out criminals and terrorists in one shoot one kill strategy with no danger to its suburbs and especially in urban regions like Karachi to protect civilians. But in Pakistan our criminals and terrorists have trained snipers while our police is still equipped with age old AK-47s , glocks and some G-3s borrowed from Army. I hope government will provide our police officials with bullet proof vests, new light accurate weapons with magnifying binoculars, laser range finders for accurate shootings and distance assessment, infrared, thermal imaging devices and night goggles to locate anyone during the night and most of all proper training for all types of possible ad hoc situations in urban and sub urban regions.
PEACE, PEACE and PEACE please…act of killing human against human are worst than Animal.
wipe out these criminals and thugs
There should be peace in Karachi even it comes through police operations but not only in Layari but all areas of Karachi including MQM strongholds.
These all PAC terrorists were brought up and fed in Shelter of PPP. The same terrorists were part and parcel of PPP and people like Zulfiqar Miraz use to call them "my kids". When they were with PPP they were the most pious and innocent people but as soon as they decide to quit PPP and stood infront of them PPP launched operation to crush them.Why PPP did not take action 4 years before when MQM was saying that this Liyari Mafia is entering different parts of city and these are all criminal elements? At that time PPP use to say this is our strong hold and there is no criminal element. Yesterday I watched this report on Dunya News where the anchor and reporter were brave enough to say on Mr. Gabol's face that these terrorists are same people who were your "kids" few weeks back.