Pakistan Cops Told to Shoot Gunmen on Sight

With Karachi in the midst of a wave of violence, Pakistan has taken the drastic step of ordering security forces and police to shoot on sight "any armed miscreant." Over the past four days at least 71 people have been killed in Pakistan’s largest city, including 34 killed yesterday alone when gunmen shot up buses and went on rampages in neighborhoods across the city, the AP reports.

“People are stuck at home, their food and rations are finishing,” says one resident. “Where is the government? Where are the police?” The killings appear to be largely motivated by politics and ethnic enmity—which can often be the same thing in Karachi. The MQM party thinks the shootings are in response to its defection from Pakistan’s ruling coalition to its opposition. “We are being punished for leaving,” one of the party’s leaders says. (More Karachi stories.)