Police raid troubled Karachi areas after 100 killed in a week
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KARACHI (Reuters) - Police arrested dozens of suspects in raids on Wednesday in Pakistan's commercial hub of Karachi following a week of gang and political violence in which more than 100 people have been killed.
The police raids came amid mounting calls from leading business groups and politicians for the army to step in to end the spreading violence.
"We have conducted 82 different raids, big and small, all across the city since last night, and have arrested 72 people," Karachi police chief Saud Mirza told Reuters.
The military's powerful chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, was quoted as saying on Sunday that the army was ready to help stem the violence if the civilian government asked it do so. The provincial government has so far ruled out an army intervention.
Mirza said the raids by police and paramilitary rangers would continue and had already shown results with only one person killed on Wednesday in the least violent day for a week.
Karachi has a long history of violence, and ethnic, religious and sectarian disputes and political rows can often explode into battles engulfing entire neighbourhoods.
Street thugs and ethnic gangs have been used by political parties as foot soldiers in a turf war in a city which contributes about two-third of Pakistan's tax revenue and is home to ports, the stock exchange and central bank.
The latest fighting erupted August 17 in the city's old district of Lyari, long a focus of battles between rival gangs and a stronghold of President Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), before spreading to other parts of the city.
Some officials and observers blame the PPP, the city's dominant Muttahida Qaumi Movement and its rival ethnic-Pashtun Awami National Party for links to criminal gangs as well as engaging in turf wars to gain political space.
All the parties deny these charges.
About 900 people have been killed in violence in Karachi this year, almost a third of them in July.
(Reporting by Faisal Aziz and Imtiaz Shah; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Jonathan Thatcher)
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