Riots persist in Pakistan after tribal chief killed

QUETTA, Pakistan – Mobs burned shops, banks and buses in a second day of rioting over the killing of a top tribal chief by Pakistani troops, raising fears that a decades-old conflict in the country’s volatile southwest could widen.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told Pakistani television that Nawab Akbar Bugti’s death Saturday was “the darkest chapter in Pakistan’s history.”

Police arrested 450 people for rioting, but the violence spread from Baluchistan province into neighboring Sindh province, where ethnic Baluchis burned tires in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.

Political leaders and analysts feared the killing of 79-year-old Bugti, a backer of greater rights for ethnic Baluch tribespeople, could influence more young Pakistanis to take up militancy.

Talaat Masood, a former army general, described Bugti’s death as a “great tragedy” that will further divide ordinary Pakistanis from the military, led by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has allied his government with Washington over strong opposition from many Pakistanis.

“It is very dangerous when we are already fighting (al-Qaida) terrorists in Pakistan to bring about another reason for radicalizing the youth,” Masood said.

Anti-government sentiment reached fever pitch on Quetta’s streets.

“The government has killed the Baluch leader. We will take revenge,” said Ghulam Mohiuddin, a 27-year-old Quetta college student.

In northern Quetta, nine policemen suffered minor wounds in a clash with dozens of protesters, some firing pistols, who tried to loot a bank and several shops, police said. A bomb blast damaged a government building and arsonists set fire to a telephone exchange in Kalat, a town 155 miles south of Quetta, police said.

Quetta Police Chief Suleman Sayed said early Sunday that a round-the-clock curfew had been imposed. But Pakistan’s Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani and Quetta’s mayor denied the curfew claim.