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Pakistan's Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on Monday took suo moto notice of the political and ethnic violence in Karachi and asked TV news channels to provide footage of incidents in the country's financial hub.
Chaudhry initiated the suo moto proceedings after several newspapers published a letter in which the writer asked the chief justice to take notice of the killings in the country's largest city.
Apex court officials said the letter was converted into a human rights case. The chief justice asked TV news channels to provide their footage of violence in the city. He asked the government to submit a report with details on the unrest in Karachi.
Chaudhry's move coincided with reports of the killing of 11 more people in Karachi, where nearly 100 people have died in a week of violence that was triggered by the kidnapping and murder of five Baloch men.
In a related development, a petition filed in the Sindh High Court asked it to direct authorities to stop the unrest in the port city.
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a Non-Governmental Organisation, recently said 490 people were killed in target killings in Karachi in the first half of this year, compared with 748 in the whole of 2010.
It said Karachi was in the grip of political, ethnic and sectarian "polarisation".