By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: At least 19 people were killed and more than 100 injured across Pakistan on Sunday as protests over the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, turned violent in several cities.
The worst of the bloodshed came in Karachi, where 10 people died in clashes outside the US consulate. Two protesters were killed in Islamabad and at least seven more lost their lives in Gilgit, according to officials and rescue workers.
Authorities responded with emergency measures, imposing Section 144 – which bans public gatherings of more than four people – across Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad, and placing parts of Gilgit-Baltistan under curfew as the unrest spread from the southern ports to the northern mountains.
In a video statement, the interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, urged restraint. “Today is a sorrowful day for the entire Muslim ummah, Pakistan’s public and Iran’s public,” he said. Stressing that every Pakistani felt the same grief as Iranians, he added: “My only request is that we all stand with you, but please do not take the law into your hands. You may protest but peacefully.”
In Karachi, police and paramilitary forces used teargas and baton charges to push back crowds outside the US consulate. The police surgeon, Dr Summaiya Syed, said eight bodies were first brought to Civil Hospital Karachi, with two more dying later from their injuries. Hospital records showed 96 people wounded in protests across the city.
The SMBB Institute of Trauma received 51 of the injured – 41 from the consulate area and 10 from demonstrations at Native Jetty and Numaish – with five still admitted, two of them critical. Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre treated seven, including two civilians and five police officers, one in critical condition. Aga Khan University Hospital dealt with eight cases, six admitted including two critical, while Fatimiyah Hospital received 30 injured, 11 of whom remained in hospital.
All nine dead and 34 injured taken to Civil Hospital Karachi had gunshot wounds, records showed. At Jinnah, two injured policemen had been struck by “hard and blunt instruments”, while two protesters arrived with firearm injuries. Emotional scenes played out outside the mortuary at Civil Hospital Karachi as families waited for formalities.
Roads around the consulate were sealed off, and fresh clashes broke out when authorities tried to position shipping containers to block nearby streets; protesters responded with stones. The Sindh information minister, Sharjeel Inam Memon, described the events as “regrettable”, saying protesters had breached the outer security barrier, entered the premises and engaged in vandalism.
The US embassy in Islamabad said it was monitoring demonstrations at its consulates in Karachi and Lahore, and potential protests at the embassy and the Peshawar consulate, advising American citizens to avoid crowds and follow local security advice. The Sindh Rangers deployed heavy mobile vigilance teams across the city.
In Islamabad, at least two protesters died, and more than 30 were injured during clashes near the Diplomatic Enclave. The district administration had already banned all gatherings under Section 144. Nine injured were taken to Polyclinic Hospital, and a further 25, including three police officers and two Rangers personnel, to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, where eight were in critical condition.
Police used heavy teargas near the Foreign Office to prevent crowds entering the enclave, eventually pushing them back out of the Red Zone with Rangers support. Later in the afternoon thousands gathered at Aabpara Chowk intending to march on the US embassy, but were stopped at Serena Chowk where more teargas was fired.
In Lahore, hundreds of Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen activists assembled outside the US consulate shortly before 11am and tried to force their way inside. A handful of officers on routine duty initially held them back. Protesters said one of their number scaled the boundary wall and was detained by guards inside; police reinforcements arrived, and an inspector negotiated his release. The Punjab government meanwhile, extended Section 144 across the province for seven days, banning gatherings of four or more and the display of any weapons.
Further north in Gilgit-Baltistan, at least seven people were killed during protests in Gilgit and a curfew was imposed in Skardu district. Zaheer Shah, a rescue official, told AFP that many more had been injured. Protesters set fire to the offices of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan in both Gilgit and Skardu, as well as a school, the office of the superintendent of police and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme building.
The Gilgit-Baltistan police said the Pakistan Army had been called in under Section 245 of the Pakistan Penal Code. Demonstrators blocked the Karakoram Highway at several points in Hunza, Nagar and Gilgit, holding portraits of Khamenei and chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans. Sit-ins were staged at Siachen Road in Kharmang, while roads in Shigar, Ghanche, Roundu and other areas remained closed. Shops, markets and businesses stayed shut across Gilgit, Skardu, Hunza, Nagar, Shigar, Kharmang, Astore and Ghanche.
The protests in Pakistan came after Iran confirmed the assassination of Khamenei in coordinated US-Israeli airstrikes on Tehran, an attack that has plunged the Middle East into its most perilous crisis in decades.
As the Iranian government announced 40 days of national mourning and seven public holidays, Iranian missiles struck a central Israeli town, killing at least nine people, while US and Israeli forces continued to bomb targets in Tehran. US President Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social that the operation against Iran could last about four weeks.
The Israeli military said 40 senior Iranian officials had been killed in the strikes, including Revolutionary Guards commander Gen Mohammad Pakpour, armed forces chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi, defence minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, head of the supreme leader’s military office Mohammad Shirazi, police intelligence chief Gholamreza Rezalan and top security adviser Ali Shamkhani. Iranian media also reported that Khamenei’s daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law died in the attack.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that US intelligence had tracked Khamenei’s movements, adding: “There was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”
Iran responded with missile volleys targeting Israel and at least seven countries hosting US bases. A strike on Beit Shemesh killed at least nine and wounded 28, with 11 still missing, according to Israeli police. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have hit the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with four ballistic missiles – a claim denied by the Pentagon – and said three US and British oil tankers had been struck and set on fire in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, though there was no independent confirmation.
Acting president Masoud Pezeshkian called the assassination “a declaration of war against Muslims”. Senior security official Ali Larijani promised a response of “a force never seen before”. The US Central Command said it had struck and sunk an Iranian Jamaran-class corvette in the Gulf of Oman. Trump told the Daily Mail the operation was “always been a four-week process” and would take “four weeks or less”. After the Pentagon confirmed three US service members had been killed, he told NBC: “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.” On Truth Social, he claimed US forces had sunk nine Iranian naval vessels and largely destroyed Iran’s naval headquarters
The conflict has brought immediate chaos to the Gulf, a vital artery for global energy trade. Shipping data showed at least 150 tankers – carrying crude oil and liquefied natural gas – had anchored in open water to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Major lines MSC and Maersk suspended operations in the region. Iranian state television said an oil tanker was hit and sinking after trying to pass through the strait, which the Revolutionary Guards declared closed.
Diplomatic efforts continued in the background. Oman’s foreign ministry said Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told his Omani counterpart that Tehran remained open to “serious efforts at de-escalation”. Omani minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi posted on X: “The door to diplomacy remains open … I still believe in the power of diplomacy to resolve this conflict.” Araghchi told ABC News: “What the United States is doing is an act of aggression. What we are doing is the act of self-defence.”
The UN nuclear agency announced an emergency meeting on Iran for Monday at Russia’s request. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called Khamenei’s death “a defining moment in Iran’s history”, writing on X: “What comes next is uncertain. But there is now an open path to a different Iran, one that its people may have greater freedom to shape.”
Experts cautioned that the loss of senior leadership was a devastating blow but would not necessarily end the clerical regime or the Revolutionary Guards’ hold on power
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