Mob battles

摘要

It is two months since gunmen rampaged through the labyrinthine Sher-shah car-parts market in Karachi, leaving 13 shopkeepers dead. But business is still bad. There is fear in the faces and voices of traders. Violence between ethnic groups has been escalating in Pakistan's largest city and politicians are accused of abetting it. The slaughtered traders were Mohajirs, a group whose ancestors migrated from northern India at the time of Pakistan's partition from India in 1947 (mohajir is an Arabic word meaning migrant). The killers are believed to have been Baluchis, whose ethnic homeland is the province of Baluchistan in western Pakistan.