KARACHI: At least 15 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Pakistan during violent protests yesterday condemning a US-made film insulting Islam, defying a government call for only peaceful demonstrations, officials said.
Ten people were killed in Karachi, the country’s largest city, and four in the northwestern city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.
The combined total of wounded in Karachi, Peshawar and in the capital Islamabad was 219.
A doctor at Karachi’s Jinnah hospital said they had received five dead and 65 people with injuries, while the city’s Civil hospital said it had also had five bodies, including that of a police officer, and at least 40 injured.
The policeman was killed in an exchange of fire with protesters in Karachi, the country’s largest city, police official Mohammad Shakeel said.
Thousands took to the streets in a series of demonstrations across Karachi, home to an estimated 18 million, to condemn the film, “Innocence of Muslims”.
Scuffles broke out when protesters tried to march towards the US consulate, throwing stones at police and trying to remove shipping containers that blocked the road, police said.
Officers launched tear gas shells and fired into the air to disperse the crowd, but three policemen were wounded by gunfire from an unknown direction, Shakeel said.
In the northwestern city of Peshawar, the Lady Reading Hospital said it had three dead, including a TV station employee shot when protesters set alight and ransacked a cinema.
Doctor Farman at Khyber Teaching Hospital, who used only one name, confirmed that another body had been brought in after the demonstrations. Hospital doctors in Peshawar gave a combined total of 79 people wounded.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said he had ordered an investigation into the TV station employee’s death and repeated government calls for protests to remain peaceful. ARY, the man’s employer, accused the police of murder.
“We consider this incident murder. We strongly condemn it. The policeman involved in the firing incident should be arrested immediately and sacked,” said senior ARY executive Owais Tohid. The channel broadcast disturbing footage of its employee, clearly in a critical condition and receiving urgent medical care in hospital.
In Islamabad, a doctor at the Services Hospital said 35 people were brought in with injuries, including eight policemen and four civilians with gunshot wounds.
Overall, 15 people have been killed in Pakistan during protests over the past week against a trailer for the crudely made film, made by extremist Christians in the United States.
Crowds set two cinemas ablaze and ransacked shops in the northwestern city of Peshawar, clashing with riot police who fired tear gas.
Mohammed Tariq Khan, a protester in Islamabad, said: “Our demand is that whoever has blasphemed against our holy Prophet should be handed over to us so we can cut him up into tiny pieces in front of the entire nation.”
Security forces fired in the air in Peshawar and the eastern city of Lahore to keep protesters away from US consulates. Police fired tear gas at about 1,000 protesters in Islamabad. The US embassy in Pakistan has run television spots, one featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying the government had nothing to do with the film.
Pakistan declared testerday a “Day of Love” for the Prophet and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said an attack on Islam’s founder was “an attack on the whole 1.5 billion Muslims”.
The foreign ministry summoned the US chargé d’affaires to lodge a protest over the video posted on YouTube, the latest in an array of irritants poisoning US-Pakistani relations.
Agencies
