Fighting kills 35 in Karachi bloodshed

At least 35 people have been killed in Karachi since Monday, with Pakistan''s interior minister describing the city as enduring "a reign of terror and bloodshed". Authorities have struggled to end nightly gun battles raging across the country''s financial capital, with political, ethnic and criminal rivalries leaving more than 200 people dead last month. Much of the fighting has been blamed on supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), based among the Urdu-speaking majority, and the rival Awami National Party (ANP), which represents ethnic Pashtun migrants. Hundreds of extra police and paramilitary troops have been deployed on the streets of Karachi, a diverse and congested port city of about 17 million people, but the cycle of civil strife has worsened in recent weeks. "Our figures show that during the last 24 hours, 35 people have died in the violence, many of whom died in shootings overnight," said provincial home department official Sharfuddin Memon said on Tuesday. Interior minister Rehman Malik said aerial surveillance would start over the city''s most troubled neighbourhoods. "We have ordered surveillance planes to be brought to Karachi for locating and weeding out the killers, who have let loose a reign of terror and bloodshed in the city," Malik said in a statement on Tuesday. Karachi, Pakistan''s largest city and its commercial centre, suffered deadly communal violence throughout the 1980s and 1990s but tensions were thought to have eased before clashes erupted again in recent years.