KARACHI, Pakistan - The crisis triggered by the ouster of Pakistan's top judge took an ominous and bloody ethnic turn Sunday as the death toll from a weekend of street warfare rose to 41, turning the volatile business capital into a city under siege.
Funeral processions were accompanied by more gunbattles and arson, ambulance crews were attacked and at least two people died in clashes between traditional rivals in Karachi - Pashtuns and Urdu-speakers linked to a party that backs President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The violence marked a serious escalation in a crisis that began with Musharraf ousting the head of the supreme court on March 9, and has hardened opposition to plans for the general - a key U.S. ally - to extend his nearly eight-year rule.
It also raised the possibility of a return to ethnic bloodshed in a port city of 15 million people that serves as the hub of Pakistan's fast-growing economy, and even raised fears for the nation's stability.
Rallies timed for a visit by suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry on Saturday sparked gunfights and clashes between supporters and opponents of the government that left corpses in the streets.
Security forces failed to restore order Sunday despite the deployment of armoured personnel carriers and pickup trucks topped with machine-guns.
The fighting opened old wounds between Pashtuns and Urdu-speaking supporters of the pro-government Mutahida Qaumi Movement party. Opposition parties accused the MQM of initiating much of the violence, in which Pashtuns appeared to account for many of the dead.
In a northern district, firefighters battled flames spreading through a row of Pashtun-owned shops after a funeral procession for an MQM activist killed the day before.
Anwar Kazmi, an official for the Edhi charitable foundation, said its ambulance crews had been shot at six times over the weekend. In one incident, unidentified gunmen killed a driver and two injured patients at a roadblock.
Based on reports from police and officials at four hospitals, the casualty toll rose to at least 41 dead and 150 wounded.
On Saturday, officials said a security force of 15,000 was deployed in the city. But there was no sign that they had intervened to stop the violence, and opposition parties blamed Musharraf and the MQM for the violence.
"We condemn this mayhem and we believe that the MQM could not have done it without the active support of Gen. Pervez Musharraf," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan People's Party of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
"It shows that the government wanted to create a situation of civil strife to find an excuse for imposing an emergency and postponing elections," Babar said.
In his own mass rally in Islamabad late Saturday, Musharraf insisted he would not declare an emergency, and said a presidential vote by legislators and parliamentary elections would go ahead as planned by year's end.
He urged opposition parties to stop protests in support of the judge.
"My heart was weeping when I saw that people were dying, they were being killed, they were being martyred," he told a crowd marshalled by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party.
Farooq Sattar, a senior MQM legislator, accused opposition parties of terrorism, claiming they had stirred violence in areas with mixed ethnic Pashtun and Punjabi populations.
"They tried to give an impression that the ethnic residents are fighting each other," Sattar said at a news conference in Karachi.
Shahi Syed, a Pashtun leader in Karachi and a senior member of the opposition Awami National Party, gave the government 72 hours to arrest those responsible for killing his associates; otherwise "we will take our own course."
The MQM is a coalition partner in both the government of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, and the federal administration.
The Karachi-based party draws its main support from Mohajirs - Muslims who fled India at partition and independence from Britain in 1947 and their descendants - and has a reputation for militancy. Musharraf himself is a Mohajir but is not in the MQM.
The party emerged in the 1980s when Mohajir resentment of Pashtun control of businesses such as public transport boiled over into violence that killed hundreds. In the 1990s, MQM activists battled security forces during clampdowns against violent organized crime.
The crackdowns were ordered by governments headed by the parties now spearheading the opposition to Musharraf.
