KARACHI: At least 14 people — eight women, four children and two men — were killed when a group of men armed with assault rifles and hand-grenades attacked a crowded commercial area in Lyari on Wednesday.

Over two dozen people were injured. The assailants apparently wanted to avenge the death of one of their men in an alleged encounter with police and Rangers on late Tuesday night, officials and witnesses said.

Heavy contingents of police and Rangers personnel present in the area failed to prevent free movement of armed men and attacks on women and schoolchildren, but officials claimed that eight suspected gangsters had been killed in several encounters. Six police and Rangers personnel were injured, they said.

“It was not a typical case of gang war for the control of each other’s turf and it was also not a targeted attack on supposed rivals, but an act of revenge for the killing of Sheraz Zikri, who was a brother of Ghafar Zikri, ‘one of the ring leaders of a gang, in an encounter late on Tuesday night,” said Karachi South DIG, Abdul Khaliq Shaikh.

He said Zikri, whose another brother Sattar Zikri was killed in an encounter in 2010, had recently joined hands with the leader of another gang, Baba Ladla, who were behind Wednesday’s attack in Jhat Pat Market.

According to the DIG, Zikri-Ladla gangs had carried out indiscriminate firing in the market out of ‘frustration’ because law-enforcement agencies had killed 60 gangsters and arrested over 400 others over the past three months.

He claimed that police chased the attackers, killed two of them and seized their weapons. They were identified as Adil and Naseeb.

A house-to-house search was conducted when some of the attackers had taken refuge in Phool Pati Lane. The suspects tried to escape, but three of them were killed in an exchange of fire, the DIG claimed.

On information that some other suspects were hiding in Gul Mohammed Lane, police and Rangers cordoned off the locality and killed another three gangsters in an encounter, Mr Shaikh claimed.

He said the operation was continuing at night and fresh contingents of police and Rangers had been sent to the area.

The DIG said Rangers sector commander Brig Basit Shuja was also supervising the operation.

Emotional and highly charged scenes were witnessed at the Civil Hospital where some of the dead and wounded had been brought.

“We received five bodies, including that of a woman and her daughter,” said Dr Jalil Qadir.

He said 26 wounded people had been brought to the hospital and one of them died.

He said the bodies of five suspects killed in Garden and Kalakot areas had been brought for autopsy.

Talking to newsmen outside the mortuary, relatives of Adil and Naseeb alleged that the two had been taken away from the Old Golimar area by police on Wednesday morning and were shot dead in Garden.

A large number of people, mostly teenagers, protested against the killings outside the hospital’s emergency department. Some of them carried banners inscribed with slogans “stop attacks on our homes and schools”.

Meanwhile, four Rangers personnel, two policemen and one civilian who suffered gunshot wounds during the alleged encounters were brought to the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre. Dr Seemin Jamali, head of the hospital’s emergency department, said their condition was satisfactory.