Pakistan's provincial Sindh government has beefed up police and paramilitary deployment at the US Consulate to over 1,000 personnel following the recent clashes between police and protesters over the killing of Shiite supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Over 12 protestors were killed, and around 47 were injured in Karachi on March 1 when they tried to break through the security perimeter around the US Consulate. Similar protests were held in Lahore and Islamabad.
The police and rangers personnel have been increased from around 100 to 1,088 following the attack on the Consulate, a senior police official said on Sunday.
SSP police, Amjad Ahmed Sheikh, said that security measures have been increased because of the violence by a crowd of around 300 people, most of them belonging to a religious party's student wing, last Sunday.
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The government has formed a Judicial Inquiry Commission to probe the incident, and it held its first meeting on Saturday.
Senior police officials said that police have registered three terrorism, murder and attempted murder cases against 150-200 unidentified protesters and formed a committee for investigations.
The JIT, which recorded statements of various police officers, including DIGs of East and South zones, SSPs of Keamari, South, City and East districts, was also told that a US Marine had opened fire at protesters when some of them breached two gates and broke into the consulate and opened fire with weapons.
A reliable police source said that senior police officials had told the JIT that around 3,000 people had gathered to protest the assassination of Khamenei, in US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
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He confirmed that the JIT was told that around 300 of the protesters, without the approval of their high-ups, proceeded towards the US consulate on their motorbikes and later managed to breach the security layer and break into the consulate compound, where some of them opened fire and vandalised the property, including smashing some windows.
The JIT was told that when some protesters started firing, an American Marine had retaliated.
The JIT was also provided with videos/footage of the incident, showing some unidentified armed men firing inside the consulate, and they were also armed with lathis, stones and inflammable material, and some of them also snatched two official weapons from the policemen and fled.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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