Au.live: Police shoot down Bhutto rioters, as Pakistan burns
Neil Varcoe and wires
28/12/2007 9:43:00 PM.
Police have opened fire on protesters in the southern city of Hyderabad, wounding five, as violent disturbances over the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto boil over.
"We opened fire when protesters got more violent and we failed to disperse them. Five of them have received bullet wounds,'' police officer Abdul Qadir Summo said.
Security forces were earlier issued orders to shoot violent protesters on sight as disturbances over the killing of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto flared, an official said.
"Yes, shoot on sight anybody who wants to damage the life of innocent citizens and public property,'' provincial Interior Minister Akhtar Zaman said.
In north-west Pakistan, a mob ransacked and then torched the office of a pro-government party.
About 1,500 people paraded in the streets and then stormed the offices of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party that backs President Pervez Musharraf, an AFP reporter said in the provincial capital of Peshawar.
The crowd - many chanting ''Bhutto is alive!'' - set the office ablaze and also pelted a cinema with stones, the reporter said.
He said police were keeping a low profile in the face of the protest, with the nation in schism after yesterday's gun and suicide attack on the pro-democracy opposition leader.
Sporadic protests have erupted in cities across the country.
Early estimates suggest 19 people have been killed since the rioting began.
The figure's come from a senior security official.
Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister and Pakistan's main opposition leader, was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack as she left a campaign rally yesterday in Rawalpindi.
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