"We have found four bodies of our party workers today," said Faisal Sabzwari, a provincial lawmaker from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the strongest political party in Karachi and one dominated by the minority Mohajir ethnic group.
"Three of them were headless, and we found the heads later on," Sabzwari told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Sabzwari blamed members of the ruling Pakistan People's Party for fueling the violence, saying much of it was being carried out by thugs from Lyari Town, a poor area of Karachi and a PPP stronghold.
"They are the Lyari gang members and criminals who are killing our workers, and there are some elements within the ruling party who patronize them," he said.
Qaim Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh province, where Karachi is the capital, and a member of the ruling party, seemed to make similar allegations against the MQM. He did not name the group directly but said "a political party" was behind the killings of its workers.
"Targeted killings are a conspiracy against the provincial government, and sacrifices of PPP workers won't go unrewarded," he told reporters Saturday.
Although both parties are members of the ruling coalition, they have a tense relationship and a history of conflict that dates back to the arrival of Mohajir immigrants from India after Pakistan gained independence in 1947. Native Sindhis, who mostly support the ruling party, resented the Mohajirs' attempts to secure well-paying government jobs.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry said Sunday that 41 people have died in targeted killings in Karachi since the beginning of the year, including 10 MQM workers, 10 from a breakaway faction called Haqiqi, and 16 members of a committee set up by the ruling party in Lyari to control violence in the area.
The five others were from a handful of political and religious groups, said the ministry's Crisis Management Cell.
The Chief of Police in Karachi tried to downplay the prevalence of political violence, insisting that of the fifty people killed in the city in the last few days of last year, "only 20 deaths were politically or ethnically motivated." "The average killing rate is 5.5 a day, which is not alarming in a city which has a population of 18 million," he told the AP, even while insisting during a Saturday television interview that the police needed cooperation from the political factions to stem the bloodshed.
It is a tense situation and while I am pretty sure that holding my breath won't help, but reading this stuff makes my chest feel tight, like I can't breathe.
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