GILGIT, Feb 23: Tension gripped Gilgit city on Sunday as the news spread that seven out of the nine people shot dead in Karachi belonged to subdivision Nagar of Gilgit district.

They were killed by three attackers outside an Imambargah in Rafah-i-Aam Society in Karachi on Saturday evening.

On Sunday morning, a large number of people gathered at the Central Imamia Mosque here and stood waiting for the five bodies to come. They were to be flown in from Islamabad.

Main shopping centres remained closed. Heavy contingents of police and paramilitary forces had been deployed in sensitive areas to ward off any untoward situation.

Police sources said that because of the inclement weather, the bodies could not be brought to Gilgit on Sunday.

The relatives of the victims told Dawn that two of the seven bodies had been buried in Karachi while the bodies of Yawar Abbas, Muhammad Ali, Ramzan Ali, Khadim Hussain and Saqib Hussain would be brought to their hometown for burial.

They added that some of the wounded persons also belonged to the Nagar valley. They are Imtiaz Hussain, Rashid Hussain, Zahur Ahmed, Mohammad Ali, Basharat Hussain and Shamsullah.

Addressing a large number of people, Khateeb Imamia Jama Masjid, Agha Ziauddin Rizvi, president of Anjuman-i-Imamia, Haji Afzal Khan, former NALC adviser, Syed Raziuddin Rizvi and other leaders of the region condemned the incident in which innocent people of the Northern Areas were killed.

The victims were stationed in Karachi in connection with their jobs and education, and had nothing to do with the sordid business of sectarianism, they said.

They demanded of the government to probe into the killing.