KARACHI, Aug 8: Tension gripped New Dhoraji Society and adjoining areas located on Abul Hasan Isphahani Road as two groups traded intense fire late in a shoot-out that continued into the early hours of Friday. However, no casualty was reported in the incident, police said.
Anticipating what they described as a Taliban offensive around the Dhoraji Society, area youths belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement were keeping a watch on any sort of suspicious activity during the night when some people said to be residing in Al Asif Square and neighboring settlements allegedly opened fire on them, police said.
This triggered a retaliatory response from the area youths and the exchange of fire continued for several hours, creating panic in the adjoining localities.
Sources in the police said that members of both the groups were called to the office of the Gulshan DSP on Friday evening. They were asked to desist from such activities in future with a warning that cases would be registered against them for creating a law and order situation in the area, the sources added.
A few weeks ago a firing incident on Abul Hasan Isphahani Road, which links University Road and the Super Highway, claimed three lives. Each deceased belonged to a different group.
Drowned
A 50-year-old man fell into an underground water tank in Cattle Colony No 5 on Friday.
Edhi sources said that Bashir drowned while trying to take out water from the underground tank. Workers at the cattle pen recovered his body and shifted it to the Jinnah hospital for legal formalities.
Campus robbery
Armed men collected about Rs200,000 from the fee collection counters of Karachi University and decamped with the booty on Thursday, police said.
Three armed suspects walked in the campus and started looting the fee collectors at gunpoint in the presence of two security guards deputed at cash counters located close to the Silver Jubilee Gate. The bandits did not bother to snatch weapons from the armed security guards who chose not to act during the hold-up, police said, adding that the robbers easily decamped with the booty. Both the guards, however, have been detained by the police for interrogation.
A senior police officer explained that the armed hold-up did not take place at any bank but at the fee collection cash counters set up inside the campus.
Gunned down
A young man was killed when some unidentified armed men opened fire in Gulshan-i-Bihar in Orangi late on Thursday night, PPI adds.
Nineteen-year-old Mohammad Asif, son of Mohammad Hussan, left his Khairabad residence in Gadap Town for some personal work in Gulshan-i-Bihar. He was gunned down by the armed men, who could not be identified till filing of this report, in the jurisdiction of Pakistan Bazaar police station.
Police shifted the body to Abbassi Shaheed Hospital for a post-mortem examination. Hospital sources said that the victim received a single bullet in his chest that proved fatal. Following the autopsy, the body was handed over to the heirs.
