Gunships ‘quell troubles in Pakistan’

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 10

Gunships ‘quell troubles in Pakistan’

NZPA-Reuter Islamabad

Martial law authorities have started using helicopter gunships to quell unrest in Pakistan’s troubled southern province of Sind in a big escalation of force against dissent, said an opposition spokesman yesterday. A spokesman for the outlawed Pakistan National Party, one of nine banned parties forming the antiGovernment Movement for the Restoration of Democracy said that the helicopters were sent into action against several Sind villages on Thursday. At least 22 people were killed, many more wounded and several hundred people arrested in one of the Army’s biggest operations in the province since the campaign against President Zia-ul-Haq’s military Government was launched in mid-August said the spokesman in the Sind capital of Karachi.

Opposition sources said that the operation was mounted at Lakiiat ana n surrounding villages near Nawabshah,. 320 km north of Karachi.

Eyewitnesses said that the Army had used helicopters to rocket several villages as heavily-armed troops combed fields and

burned crops to flush out alleged trouble-makers. Some sources alleged that troops had used machineguns to fire on unarmed villages.

The Government has admitted there was trouble around Lakhat, but said only one armed civilian was killed and four others wounded in an encounter between security forces and what were termed “lawless elements.” The official statement made no mention of the use of helicopters in the operation, but said that 28 armed men and 70 others had been arrested and a large quantity of weapons recovered.