Pakistan turns violent

The situation in Pakistan turns violent. AFP:

Rival political workers fought intense gunbattles Saturday ahead of huge rallies by Pakistan's suspended top judge and President Pervez Musharraf, leaving 15 people dead and scores more injured.

Black smoke billowed over the volatile southern city of Karachi as two months of tensions over Musharraf's removal of defiant Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry boiled over into violence.

Mobs also torched a police post, four buses and dozens of other vehicles despite the presence of 15,000 paramilitary troops and police on the streets of the port city of 12 million people.....

"There are many areas where injured people are lying in the road and ambulances cannot reach there."

AP:

In some of the bloodiest fighting, pro-government and opposition activists armed with assault rifles traded fire with assault rifles about half a mile from Karachi's international airport. A witness said three people traveling in a car were killed and a passer-by was wounded.

The only slightly positive thing that can be said is that the violence is between Musharraf backers and democratic centrists, lawyers, and Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, and does not yet involve the extreme Islamists.

Later: The death toll is up to 27.