Heavy Fighting Enters Third Day in Pakistan

Heavy fighting raged for a third day in Pakistan’s northwest province as civilians flooded from the area and the Pakistani military reported some gains in pushing back Taliban insurgents.
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The militants continued to unleash attacks, hitting a checkpost belonging to government paramilitary forces from the Frontier Corps in northern Buner, and seizing several police stations across the region, including two in the upper reaches of Swat.
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Compounding Pakistan’s problems, ethnic gang warfare raged in the southern port city of Karachi, leaving more than 30 people dead in two days of street violence. Meanwhile, officials warned of a tense situation in the southwest, in Baluchistan Province, where the government has failed to calm public anger over the killing of three nationalist leaders.

In Karachi, paramilitary rangers were deployed to stem the street violence. Some 34 people have been killed and 42 people injured in the violence, which began when a group of gunmen opened fire on an outlying settlement in the north of the city, local news agencies reported. About 20 vehicles were torched, local reporters said.

Karachi, a sprawling city of some 14 million, and a melting pot of Pakistan’s ethnic groups, has for decades been racked by ethnic, gang and drug-related violence. Concerns have grown recently that radical Islamists and Taliban sympathizers have established an increasingly aggressive presence in outlying Pashtun neighborhoods and frequently clashed with supporters of the MQM, a secular, immigrant-based party that dominates many of the central urban neighborhoods.

Not good.