KARACHI, July 3: Condemning the killing of a local party leader Yaqub Baloch in the city, Senator Hasil Bizenjo, a senior leader of the National Party, said on Tuesday that the targeted killing of Baloch people was a conspiracy to banish them from Karachi.

NP leader Yaqub Baloch was gunned down at a Nazimabad office of the Karachi Electric Supply Company on Monday.

Speaking at a press conference here at the Karachi Press Club, Mr Bizenjo held the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and its ‘racist’ ally responsible for the ongoing killings and breakdown of law and order in the city.

He said that for the past many years Baloch settlements in different parts of the city were being targeted and Balochs were being killed on a daily basis in the city and the situation caused unrest among Balochs coming to Karachi from Balochistan.

Accompanied by party leaders Mubarak Baloch, Jan Muhammad Buledi and Ayub Qureshi, the NP leader said that parties in the ruling coalition were hurling allegations of hatching a conspiracy against one another while innocent people were being killed.

He said that Yaqub Baloch, who was NP’s chief organiser in Karachi, was also an employee of the KESC.

Mr Bizenjo said that Balochs living in Karachi had always fought against dictatorships and had been in the forefront of every political struggle.

He said that the rulers were trying to end democratic and people-friendly politics in Karachi so that people no longer strove for their rights.

He claimed that the PPP had failed to solve a single problem of Baloch people.

Mr Bizenjo said that the NP and Balochs in Karachi stood in the way of the division of Sindh.

Responding to a question, Mr Bizenjo said that Karachi was being destroyed in a war of vested interests by the PPP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement because Baloch people were thought to be on the PPP’s side and the Urdu-speaking people on the MQM’s side.

As a result, he said, for the past three months Baloch and Urdu-speaking people had considered themselves insecure while passing through each others’ localities.

When his attention was drawn towards Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf’s offer to Baloch leaders to sort out their problems in Balochistan, he said his predecessor Yousuf Raza Gilani had also formed 10 committees for this purpose without any outcome.

He refused to pin his hopes on the latest offer.He said he would take up the issue of targeted killing of his party leader in the Senate when it resumed session on July 10.