Pakistan Immigrant Group Blamed For Killings

Escalating ethnic warfare claimed up to a dozen victims in the port of Karachi on Monday, including five officers whose mutilated bodies were found stuffed into a burlap sack.

The five - two army captains, two policemen and a paramilitary Ranger - had been shot, Police Inspector Sadiq Mohammed said. The disfigured bodies were found dumped in a bag on a lane in central Karachi; some had been burned, Mohammed said.

Police blamed militants in the Mohajir Quami Movement, which stepped up attacks in 1995 in its demand for better treatment of Indian Muslim immigrants.

Victims on the first day of 1996 included five men in one family, each of them executed with a bullet to the back of the head as female relatives listened in an adjoining room, police said.

The other two casualties Monday were also shooting victims, including one shot repeatedly with an AK-47 automatic rifle, police said.

The immigrant mohajirs make up about 70 percent of Karachi’s population, but say they are treated as second-class citizens in employment and education.