Two supporters of an Islamic group were killed and three others, including a passerby, were wounded today in the Pakistani port city of Karachi in an exchange of gunfire with a rival political party, police said.
The gunfight occurred between supporters of the Islamic Sunni Tehreek (Movement of Sunni Muslims) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in a low-income eastern neighbourhood, police and ambulance workers said.
"It was a clash between two groups in which two persons were killed and three were wounded," said Mr Syed Kamal Shah, the police chief of southern Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital.
"We will arrest the culprits soon," he said. The Sunni Tehreek is considered a non-violent Islamic group, but it is locked in a bitter tussle with rival political and religious parties because it is trying to expand its support base.
The MQM, a coalition partner in Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz's government, has been dominating the politics of Karachi since mid-1980s. Karachi, a teeming city of around 15 million people, has a history of bloody political and religious violence in which hundreds of people have been killed in recent years.