MINISTER'S OUTBURST LEADS TO 14 DEADS IN PAKSITAN

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Violence triggered Provincial Minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Zulfiqar Mirza(right photo) outburst against the top leader of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) left 14 people dead in Karachi, the country's biggest city and capital of Sindh province.
MQM supporters took to the streets in the party's Karachi stronghold and also in Hyderabad and some other cities of Sindh overnight after the offensive remarks by senior provincial minister Zulfikar Mirza.

• The federal government promptly moved to control the damage. Federal cabinet members including interior minister Rehman Malik(right photo) said Mirza's statement was his personal opinion and expressed regret over the remarks.
• Mirza himself offered his apologies in a statement issued by the Sindh information ministry and said Urdu-speaking people — the largest community in the port city of more than 15 million people — were his brothers.
• In his remarks, Mirza said the leader of a breakaway MQM faction was the ‘true leader of muhajirs,' the millions who migrated from India after the 1947 partition of the sub-continent and their descendants.
• He had reviled London-residing MQM chief Altaf Hussain(right photo) and accused the party of trying to divide Sindh.
• The Awami National Party (ANP), which represents Pashto-speaking residents in Karachi and is a PPP partner in government, as well as the country's main opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) flayed Mirza's diatribe.

Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wasan(left photo) said 14 people had been killed and 25 injured in Karachi and one person was killed in Hyderabad. More than 30 vehicles were also torched in different parts during the turmoil, he said.
He appealed to all parties to help restore peace and order and said all necessary security measures were being taken.

• The violence came as Karachi was recovering from the shocks of a recent cycle of bloodshed in which up to one hundred people were killed, in the wake of MQM's withdrawal from the PPP government after more than three years of an often shaky alliance.
• Mirza's public accusations against MQM, when he was Sindh home minister around two months ago, sparked tension between the two parties, which the PPP leadership defused by sending him on leave.
• His latest diatribe after rejoining the Sindh cabinet as senior minister this month surprised many as the PPP leadership was striving to win back the estranged former ally despite the latter's refusal to mend fences.

Source: Gulfnews