Karachi traders back call for ceasefire in Gaza
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Throwing their weight behind the global call for a strike to protest Israel’s brutalities against the people of Gaza and press for a ceasefire in the war-torn territory, a complete shutterdown strike was observed in most of Karachi’s small and large business centres on Monday.
According to the 24NewsHD TV channel, all shops in the Old City areas, MA Jinnah Road, and Liaquatabad remained shut. These included electronics shops as well.
Traders in Karachi’s Jorrya Bazaar took out a rally to register their protest against Israel’s atrocities against the people of Gaza.
Holding Palestinian flags in their hands, the traders chanted slogans against Israel.
Speaking to the protestors, Wholesale Grocers Chairman Abdur Rauf Ibrahim said that thousands of Palestinians had been martyred while as many had been rendered homeless due to relentless bombing by the Israeli forces. “But the entire Muslim world is watching it like a mute spectator,” he said, adding, “It was high time that we boycotted the Israeli products.”
Similarly, shopkeepers at the city's Zainab Market and Saddar also kept their shops closed.
Speaking to the media, they said they were protesting against what they called the genocide of the Gazans at the hands of Israeli forces.
They called for unity in the Islamic world so that Jewish state's brutalities could be denounced more effectively.
AFP reported that Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 44 people on Sunday as Israel's prime minister vowed a "strong response" to a rare salvo of rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled territory.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed almost daily since Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire that had brought relative calm to the territory.
"The death toll as a result of Israeli air strikes since dawn today is at least 44, including 21 in Khan Yunis," a city in the southern Gaza Strip, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
One strike killed six people on Al-Nakheel Street in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, where a group had gathered near a bakery, Bassal said. Three children were among the dead, he said.
A Hamas statement called the strike "a deliberate act of child killing" and a "confirmation of the sadistic and barbaric nature of the occupation and its fascist leaders".
AFP footage captured thick plumes of smoke rising from central and northern Gaza as Israeli forces bombarded areas of the besieged Palestinian territory.
A ceasefire brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar ended on March 18 as Israel resumed its offensive in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
Elsewhere Israel said it shot dead "one terrorist" in the West Bank for throwing rocks, with Palestinian officials claiming it was a 14-year-old boy with US citizenship.
Reporters: Kawish Memon and Mir Keeryo