Karachi, Pakistan — At least six people were killed and about a dozen others were injured in violent clashes with police and paramilitary forces on Sunday after hundreds of demonstrators stormed the US consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, authorities said.
The violence came hours after the United States and Israel attacked Iran and killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Police and hospital officials in Karachi said that at least eight people were also injured in the clashes.
Somaya Syed Tariq, a police surgeon at the city’s main government hospital, confirmed that six bodies and many injured people had been taken to the hospital. Karachi is the capital of the southern Sindh province and the largest city in Pakistan.
Senior police official Irfan Baloch said that the demonstrators briefly attacked the vicinity of the US consulate but were later dispersed. “The situation is now completely under our control,” Baloch said.
He denied reports that any part of the consulate building had been set on fire, describing them as baseless. But he said demonstrators set fire to a nearby police station and smashed the windows of the consulate before security forces arrived and regained control.
Witnesses said dozens of Shiite protesters remained gathered about one kilometer (half a mile) from the consulate, urging others to join them. Shiites constitute approximately 15% of Pakistan’s population of approximately 250 million people and represent one of the largest Shiite sects in the world. They have often organized anti-Israel and anti-US rallies in the past, although clashes of this scale are rare.
Police said Shiites also organized a march near the US consulate in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province. Faisal Kamran, a senior police official, said demonstrators tried to protest outside the consulate but were not allowed to do so. He added that the police dispersed the crowd when they tried to walk towards the building.
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Associated Press writers Babar Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan, and Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan, contributed to this story.