Getting stuck in a shoot-out at Natha Khan bridge

KARACHI: “Do not get out of the car! Keep your head down and off you go. We aren’t targeting you, are we? Go, go, go!”

These were the rapid-fire instructions from a man in a blue shalwar kameez, who stopped my friend and I as we tried to run for our lives after getting stuck in the middle of a shoot-out at Natha Khan bridge late Monday night.

Activists from two political parties got into a row over hoisting party flags at Drigh Road and started shooting at each other. I had gone to pick up my friend Omer Yousaf from the airport at 11:30 pm. We took a left from the airport road to take Sharae Faisal when we came to a sudden halt because of a massive traffic jam.

There was something different about this jam. People were running in the opposite direction of the road. The public transport bus next to my car was being evacuated and families on motorcycles were turning around. Several cars were reversing. I got out.

“Why is everyone turning around?” I asked a man in the car next to mine.

He hesitated. “I think people are saying that gunshots are being fired ahead.”

As soon as I heard this, I jumped back into the car and told Omer to get out as soon as possible. The rightmost lane had opened and we squeezed through. I turned to look. Men were kneeling on the right and left side of the bridge, their faces masked to their eyeballs. Each one had a gun. I went numb.

The left and right corners of the bridge were covered with men, women and children, who were lying down with their hands behind their heads. Suddenly, one of the men opened fire and I saw orange bullets spray across the bridge, as people screamed in panic, “Run, run, run!”

Omer shouted at me: “Leave everything! Get out of the car and run backwards!”

We were about to leave when the man in the blue shalwar kameez came with his warning. Apparently we had nothing to worry about because we weren’t the “targets”. We decided to take his advice. I felt my friend pull me down. “Musab, just duck till the doors cover you, do not look up, no matter what!”

I looked out one last time and saw some people running off the bridge, some lying down and a spray of orange bullets flying in front of me. Omer hit the gas.

Another man, Omar Ehtisham, also got stuck. He had arrived in Karachi from Lahore on the 12:15 am flight and was headed home in a taxi when he hit the traffic jam. When the taxi driver was told that there was danger of being caught in the crossfire, he tried to turn the vehicle around. However, because a large number of vehicles were behind his car, he was forced to drive through the firing.

“We just ducked and drove through,” Ehtisham told The Express Tribune. “The firing could be heard on the left side of the bridge. There was a police van on the bridge and a number of private cars had created a sort of a shield. One of the people told my cab driver that the firing had started after [a party’s] workers started putting up their flags on the bridge. The police told us to get out.”

The police and Rangers eventually reached the scene and the armed men fled. The area was then cordoned off but by then the spot was deserted.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th, 2010.