LARKANA, Feb 24: Two motorcyclists lobbed petrol bombs on three shops on Nishtar road and injured six people, two of them seriously, on Tuesday night.

DIG Larkana Commander (retd) Shaukat said it might be continuation of similar incidents in Hyderabad.

Those injured included Atta Khan, Gulab Khan, Mohammed Haneef, Hakeem, Parvez and four-year-old Sadam Hussain. They were taken to Chandka Medical College Hospital.

Hakeem and Atta Khan were in critical condition as they had received severe burn injuries. They were later shifted to Karachi for further treatment as the CMCH has no burn wards facility.

The petrol bombs were hurled on the shops selling electronic items on installation. As a result of the attacks, fire broke out and damaged the electronic items in the shops.

An injured identified as Iqbal told journalists in the hospital that unknown motorcyclists threw petrol bombs in the shops when he was busy in prayers. He could hardly saved his brother Sadam Hussain and rushed out of the shop. ‘We are doing this business for the last 20 years and during this period no such incident took place, he said.

The Larkana DIG said that a team headed by a SP was constituted to probe the incident. The Additional SP and Supervising Police Officer and the SHO of concerned police station are the members of the committee that would collect the facts and thoroughly investigate the incident, he said.

Qadir Bakhsh Bhatti, vice president District Bar Association, said that it was an attempt to ignite ethnic violence.

Our Hyderabad bureau adds: Expressing concern over recent incidents of arson in Hyderabad in which four shops were gutted, District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has constituted a 10-member committee to submit recommendations on ways to maintain law and order in the city and assess the damages with the help of revenue officials.

He constituted the committee during a meeting with a nine-member delegation of the Awami National Party which called on him at his secretariat here. The members of the delegation included ANP vice-president Lala Aurangzeb, provincial senior vice-president Haji Asmatullah Mehsud and district president Haji Sher Zaman.

MPA Sohail Yousuf, City Taluka Nazim Ghulam Shabbar Chishti, Latifabad Taluka Nazim Sabir Hussain Kaimkhani, PPP leader Amanullah Siyal and DPO Ghulam Nabi Memon were also present on the occasion.

The meeting decided to make joint and concerted efforts to foil conspiracies of the miscreants who were trying to destroy the peace of the city.

The district nazim said that the miscreants would not be allowed to go scot-free and appreciated the spirit of the Pakhtoons. He directed the DPO to deploy policemen in mufti in the city to keep an eye on miscreants and increase patrolling by mobile police.

Meanwhile, activists of the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party held a demonstration outside the press club here on Tuesday to protest against torching of four shops in the city.

Addressing the demonstrators, PMAP leader Saleem Khan Tareen criticised what he called duplicity of the ANP and accused it of betraying the Pakhtoon cause.

He said that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Pakistan People’s Party and the ANP were in the federal and Sindh governments but they had failed to stop terrorist activities in Karachi and Hyderabad.

He said that he wondered why the Pakhtoons were being targeted although they belonged to the poor segment of society and worked on roads and as watchmen.

The rally adopted a resolution, calling upon the Sindh government to protect the life and property of Pakhtoons, compensate the victims and expose the miscreants. It appealed to political and social activists to take collective efforts to make Hyderabad a city of peace.