KARACHI, Dec 17: Leaders of the Punjabi Pakhtoon Organising Committee of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement on Sunday accused Jamaat-i-Islami of deliberately triggering violence in the city on Friday and causing damage to public and private properties.

Addressing a news conference at the Karachi Press Club on Sunday, they alleged that the JI had hatched a conspiracy to trigger ethnics riots by pitting Urdu- and Pakhtoon-speaking people against each other during the Friday strike, which was called by the Pakhtoon Action Committee.

Joint In-charge of the committee Sardar Khan, accompanied by other office-bearers alleged that the JI had played a key role in the violence that would have plunged the city into another cycle of ethnic violence on a day when the MQM was remembering victims of the Pucca Qila and Aligarh Colony massacres, and observing anniversary of the fall of Dhaka.

He claimed that JI activists, taking advantage of the strike, harassed people and attacked the Urdu-speaking majority areas.

“There was no reason for attacks on citizens and certain areas as the government had accepted all demands put forward by transporters,” he argued, adding that the violence had been resorted to with an ulterior motive and to achieve political objectives.

He claimed that on December 14, some miscreants working for vested interests had gathered in Frontier Colony and conspired to create fear and harassment among the people by carrying out sporadic shooting elsewhere in the city. The miscreants, he further claimed, also looted and harassed people in the Metro Cinema area and at Bacha Khan Chowk.

Mr Khan alleged that JI workers, chanting slogans, also marched towards Aligarh Colony and certain areas dominated by Urdu-speaking people where they harassed passers-by and damaged public and private properties.

“Armed men in a green colour Toyota jeep No -LS-6331 indulged in aerial firing and people informed local police but no action was taken against them,” he claimed.

He also accused JI nazims and workers of provoking Pakhtoons to attack Urdu-speaking people and setting ablaze MQM party flags in Pakhtoons-dominated areas, besides harassing MQM supporters.

He said that under the leadership of Altaf Hussain, 98 per cent poor people of Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan were striving for their rights but the two per cent ruling class and their agents wanted to create a rift among the majority.

He appealed to people, especially Pakhtoons, to foil all conspiracies being hatched, according to him, by the JI and the ruling class to trigger ethnic riots.