Violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi and in the country’s north left at least 22 people dead and more than 120 injured, as demonstrators supportive of the Iranian government attempted to storm a US consulate on Sunday, authorities said.
In the north of the country, demonstrators attacked UN and government offices.
The violence came after the US and Israel attacked Iran, killing its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Photo: EPA
Police and officials at a hospital in Karachi said that at least 50 people were also wounded in the clashes and some of them were in critical condition.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari expressed his “profound sorrow over the martyrdom” of Khamenei and conveyed his condolences to Iran, his office said.
“Pakistan stands with the Iranian nation in this moment of grief and shares in their loss,” he said.
Summaiya Syed Tariq, a police surgeon at the city’s main government hospital, confirmed six bodies and multiple injured people were brought to the facility. However, she said the death toll rose to 10 after four critically wounded people died.
In addition, 12 people were killed and more than 80 wounded in clashes with police in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, when thousands of protesters angered by US and Israeli strikes on Iran attacked the offices of the UN Military Observer Group and the UN Development Programme, local police official Asghar Ali said.
A government spokesman, Shabir Mir, said all staff working for those organizations was safe.
He said protesters repeatedly clashed with police at various places in the region, damaged the offices of a local charity and set fire to police offices.
However, authorities had deployed troops and brought the situation under control, he said.
The US embassy in Pakistan said in a post on X that it was monitoring reports of ongoing demonstrations at the US consulates in Karachi and Lahore, as well as calls for additional protests at the US embassy in Islamabad and the consulate in Peshawar.
It advised US citizens in Pakistan to monitor local news, stay aware of their surroundings, avoid large crowds and keep their travel registration with the US government up to date.
In Karachi, which is the capital of southern Sindh province and Pakistan’s largest city, senior police official Irfan Baloch said that protesters briefly attacked the perimeter of the US consulate, but were later dispersed.
He dismissed reports that any part of the consulate building was set on fire.
However, he said that protesters torched a nearby police post and smashed windows of the consulate before security forces arrived and regained control.
Protests in the area surrounding the consulate went on for hours, with dozens of youth, some covering their faces, throwing stones at law enforcement officials and vowing to reach the consulate where hundreds of police and paramilitary officers have been deployed.
The clashes prompted Pakistani Minister of the Interior Mohsin Naqvi to issue an appeal for calm.
“Following the martyrdom of Ayatollah Khamenei, every citizen of Pakistan shares in the grief of the people of Iran,” Naqvi said in a statement, but urged people not to take the law into their own hands and to express their protests peacefully.
The provincial government of Sindh also urged citizens to express their views peacefully and warned against engaging in violence.
Protests took place elsewhere in Pakistan
In Islamabad, police fired tear gas and swung batons as hundreds of protesters, angered by the killing of Khamenei, tried to march toward the US embassy. The clashes took place outside the city’s diplomatic enclave, where the embassy is located, and additional police had been deployed.
Meanwhile, in the northwestern city of Peshawar, authorities also used tear gas and batons to disperse thousands of demonstrators attempting to approach the US consulate to hold a rally and to denounce the killing of the Iranian leader, police said.
Protesters also held a peaceful rally in Multan, a city in Punjab province, chanting slogans against Israel and the US.
Mamoona Sherazi, who attended the rally, said that she was protesting Khamenei’s killing.
“God willing, we will never bow before America and Israel,” she said.
Protesters also rallied and clashed with police repeatedly near the US consulate in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province, police said.
Authorities said that the government has stepped up security around the US embassy in the capital, and consulates across the country to avoid any further violence.
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