Militants yesterday attacked the stock exchange in the Pakistani city of Karachi, killing at least six people — four security guards, a policeman and a bystander, police said.
Special police forces deployed to the scene of the attack and in a swift operation secured the building.
Local police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon confirmed that all four attackers were also dead.
Photo: Reuters
The Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), ethnic Baloch separatists, claimed responsibility for the attack. Over the past few years, the group has hit a string of high-profile targets across the country, including in the southern port city of Karachi.
The attackers were armed with grenades and automatic rifles, and launched the attack by opening fire at the entrance gate of the Pakistan Stock Exchange, the police said.
Heavily armed special forces quickly surrounded the building, located in the heart of Karachi’s financial district, where the Pakistan State Bank is located, as well as the headquarters of several national and international financial institutions.
Local television stations broadcast images of police in full body armor surrounding the building, but still staying outside the high-walled compound of the stock exchange.
Rizwan Ahmend, a police official at the scene, said that after opening fire, the gunmen entered the stock exchange grounds.
He said that after the attack was over, police found food supplies on the bodies of the gunmen, indicating they might have planned a long siege, which police quickly thwarted.
Inside the stock exchange, broker Yaqub Memon said that he and others were huddled inside their offices while the attack was underway.
As the firing ended and the gunmen were killed, police gathered all the employees and brokers in a single room, while security forces went floor by floor to ensure that no explosives had been left behind, he said.
Police spokesman Shazia Jehan said that the police called the bomb disposal team to the stock exchange to clear the building of any explosive devises.
The BLA is one of several insurgent groups fighting primarily in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province, which has been rocked by separatist, Islamist and sectarian violence for years.
The group in the past few years has targeted infrastructure projects along with Chinese workers in Pakistan multiple times, including during a brazen daylight attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, which killed four people in 2018.
In May last year, the BLA attacked a luxury hotel near the Afghan border at Gwadar, where a port development is the flagship project of a China-funded multibillion-dollar national infrastructure project.
The group yesterday circulated to the media a photograph of four men in full body armor and camouflage outfits, saying they were the militants who attacked the stock exchange.
The Karachi stock exchange is Pakistan’s largest and oldest stock exchange, incorporated today with the exchanges in Islamabad and Lahore.
Additional reporting by AFP
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
COMFORT WOMEN CLASH: Japan has strongly rejected South Korean court rulings ordering the government to provide reparations to Korean victims of sexual slavery The Japanese government yesterday defended its stance on wartime sexual slavery and described South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese compensation as violations of international law, after UN investigators criticized Tokyo for failing to ensure truth-finding and reparations for the victims. In its own response to UN human rights rapporteurs, South Korea called on Japan to “squarely face up to our painful history” and cited how Tokyo’s refusal to comply with court orders have denied the victims payment. The statements underscored how the two Asian US allies still hold key differences on the issue, even as they pause their on-and-off disputes over historical
CONSOLIDATION: The Indonesian president has used the moment to replace figures from former president Jokowi’s tenure with loyal allies In removing Indonesia’s finance minister and U-turning on protester demands, the leader of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy is scrambling to restore public trust while seizing a chance to install loyalists after deadly riots last month, experts say. Demonstrations that were sparked by low wages, unemployment and anger over lawmakers’ lavish perks grew after footage spread of a paramilitary police vehicle running over a delivery motorcycle driver. The ensuing riots, which rights groups say left at least 10 dead and hundreds detained, were the biggest of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s term, and the ex-general is now calling on the public to restore their
RSS