KARACHI: The year 2012 was no different for the residents of Karachi. The city’s scariest specter - target killing – haunted it all year round, while many lives were also lost to multiple terrorist attacks.
Below are few facts gathered from police data about the killings in the city.
• At least six people were killed each day.
• Over 3,000 people were injured in firing incidents.
• Around 70 of the said injured are handicapped for life.
• Around 61 of the dead belonged to Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), 18 to Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), 19 to Awami National Party (ANP), 13 to Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H) and eight to Sunni Tehreek (ST).
• Sectarian violence claimed 45 lives in 2012 including five lawyers and two doctors.
• Nearly 28,104 targeted operations were carried and 92 criminals killed.
According to the Sindh Police, not all murders were target killings.
A police representative said target killings have only claimed 438 lives, while the rest were victims of personal fights and enmities.
Today’s toll
At least eight people were killed in Karachi, while one police officer sustained injuries on Monday in different firing incidents across the city.
Unidentified armed men gunned down three people in Nazimabad, two in Machar Colony, one in North Karachi, one in Sohrab Goth and another in Ayub Goth.
COMMENTS (27)
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@Umair: Its such dirty thinking of yours and your fellow men that led to the fall of East Pakistan.
How impressively shameful !!! you can count the numbers but can u ever realize the suffering their families go through. It seems more like scoring thing than a tragedy. Think upon it.
What is source of this data? It seems flawed. Please include citation. How about Sindhi Nationalist parties? Why didnt this report include people who were killed during Awami Tahreek's "Mohabat e Sindh rally" and several attack on numerous other Sindhi Nationalist rallies. This report is nothing but bogus to prove one party of Karachi as most suffering.
Stop taking sides. Work towards reducing all violence and murders irrespective of political affiliations. If you are taking a side then you are PART of the problem, a never-ending problem. Do you UNDERSTAND this?
@Iftikthar Zaidi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnitedStatescitiesbycrime_rate
Here's the link. If you sort by murder rate, there are 25 American cities (population more than 250K) that have a homicide rate of more than 10. This includes Detroit, Philly, DC, Houston, Chicago.
You're right about New York, in the last 15 years the NYPD has reduced crime at a rate never seen before largely by first cleaning the police force itself, and then with the FBI, badly crippling the Mafia crime families (Gambino, etc ...). Karachi should use examples like this and a few other cities in the world.
I do agree however that the murder solve rate in Karachi is probably much lower than any of these cities. Also petty crime never gets reported in Karachi, so that is almost definitely way way higher.
@Iftikhar Zaidi: Newyork had a TOTAL of 380 HOMICIDES on average Chicago has in the region of 450 HOMICIDES (that includes all murders)
I dont know how these ppl are comparing it to karachi...
Comparing Karachi with other mega cities of the world is like comparing apples with oranges. Those cities have differnet set of problems, mostly drugs gangs related deaths or ethnic problems whereas Karachi is sitting on volcano of political, ethnic, religious, drugs and arms mafia, land mafia, bhatta groups, Taliban and God knows how many other mafias.
@Karim, actually most American cities are well below 10 per 100,000 homicides. New York, traditionally one of the most violent of American cities was 5.6 per 100,000 in 2009 (it used to be significantly higher in the 80s and 90s though). Chicago is the major exception with close to 15 homicides per 100,000.
A better comparison is with other third world countries. Mumbai with its population roughly the same size as Karachi's and its infamous criminal gangs was 1.3 per 100,000 in 2009. Dhaka was 5.3 per 100,000 in 2006. Istanbul was 4.7 per 100,000 in 2009 while Bangkok was 4.3.
Real equivalencies can be found in the mega-cities of South America. Sao Paulo, the largest city of Brazil with its 20 million population had a murder rate of 10.8 per 100,000 in 2009 (Sao Paulo's worst times came in 2004 when with over 8,000 homicides they had a murder rate that hit 20 per 100,000.) Bogota in the drug cartel dominated country of Colombia had a murder rate of 17.1 per 100,000 in 2010.
So Karachi's homicide rate is certainly bad, especially when compared with other large cities in the region. But not so insanely high as some would make out. Its important to keep in mind that if the political will can be found to do it then the homicide rate can be brought down.
Please ET, don't prompt these political fanatics to sort out their murder scoring with their rivals by showing such statistics. Of course someone will be upset to be the bigger part of this pie chart and will take on innocent Karachiites to level the graph.
@Sajjad Hassan..
Do you read your comments before posting them?? Nonsense...
@Sajjad Hassan..
I would say whatever you said was very cheap indeed.... tomorrow you will say that we can kill our own children. that was really cheap indeed...
@karim: Please name one city. And also mention follow up police. No body spared due to any political connection. Murder file stay open until it concluded with conviction.
@Umair
What is that supposed to mean???????
Thats Bloody 2012; but the auther missed the number of SHIAGenocide in the city. That number will be way higher then this and TTP/Lej claims the responsibility of these killings still nobody dare to grab them B*.
@Sajjad Hassan: No, number is highest because Mqm is dealing multiple enemies which is not the case with other parties.
@Umair: If that would be case then mqm slained worker number will be in thousands.
Killing in Karachi Of political workers involves some hidden hands.
@Ahmed Ali: Fully agree with you!
@Umair: Your comments show your racist mentality :)
@ Sajjad Hassan, Pathetic responce!!
ET; it would be nice if this sad killing rate of Karachi is compared to major US cities @ murders per 100,000. Karachi would fare lot better than a large number of US cities. Having stated the above, these killings have to STOP
Mr tribune there is a mistake in your reporting pl correct all the victims pertains to MQM. Be Brave
Somebody may kill his own people to achieve two goals:
(1) Remove all the traces.
(2) To portray as being oppressed.
Well, in that case that somebody would've the highest number of people killed. Wouldn't he?
WoW!! God knows how exactly right is this pie chart!
In a city of 21M, that's about 10 per 100,000. That's lower than most American cities.
@Ahmed Ali: Because MQM treats every urdu speaking dark coloured man as their KARKUN :/
and people would still just blame MQM for all this isntead pointing out the real cause, hypocrisy.