KARACHI, Sept 3 (AFP) - Two political activists were shot dead Friday ahead of a general strike called by the opposition that has prompted one of the heaviest security clampdowns ever seen here.
The shooting occurred in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, hours before police blockaded the downtown venue of an opposition public meeting and chased away groups approaching the area, witnesses said.
The two opposition political workers were killed in a shootout with a security patrol in the city's central Khwaja Ajmer Nagri area, police said.
A senior police official said the two were riding motorcycles and ignored an order to stop. "They opened fire at the police who returned the fire which killed both of them."
He claimed they were carrying molotov cocktails and planned to torch vehicles.
The opposition Ethnic Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party spokesman Farooq Sattar condemned the incident as "murder".
"It is a brutal attempt to harass and terrorise people so they do not turn up at the MQM's public meeting," Sattar said.
"We were fearing that police will kill people extra-judicially and burn vehicles and put the blame on the MQM for violence," he said.
Thousands of police, para-military and commandos were deployed as tension gripped the port city.
The MQM and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) have called for a general strike on Saturday across southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
The strike is part of a campaign by opposition and religious parties to topple Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Witnesses said police besieged the downtown Burns Road area where the MQM, which represents Sindh's large Mohajir settler community, was to hold the public meeting.
But small groups of MQM supporters kept on trying to enter the area and were chased away by the security forces.
Demonstrators burned at least one bus and a private car in the port city, residents said.
The government has declared Saturday's strike illegal and banned public gatherings, threatening stern action against violaters.
Opposition leaders said hundreds of political workers were detained in the city Friday, on top of some 1,500 others who have already been held in the province, mostly in Karachi, over the past week.
Karachi has a history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence that has claimed more than 4,000 lives over the past four years.
The MQM accuses the government of persecuting the party and the community it represents. The government blames it for fomenting violence.
Sharif placed Sindh under direct federal rule in October, bypassing the elected provincial assembly.