Lawyers carrying posters of suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry during an anti-Musharraf protest rally in Karachi yesterday. (AFP)

KARACHI • Thousands of people rallied against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday for the first time since violent clashes in Karachi, as the military ruler headed to the still-tense city.

About 2,500 opposition supporters burned effigies of the president in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan at the same time as Musharraf held a public rally of his own there, witnesses and officials said.

Another 3,000 lawyers, rights activists and opposition workers gathered in the eastern city of Lahore where they chanted slogans in support of the country’s suspended top judge, a witness said.

“We will continue our struggle and protests until the elimination of the dictatorship,” cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan told the crowd.

The opposition movement that has gathered around the figure of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry since his suspension by Musharraf in March has been quiet since May 12 and 13, when violent clashes erupted in Karachi. About 40 people were killed there during the country’s worst ethnic bloodshed for two decades.

The violence started between pro- and anti-government camps but developed into fighting between mohajirs, or people whose families fled India after partition in 1947, and Pashtuns hailing from northwest Pakistan.

Musharraf told his rally in Dera Ghazi Khan that there were “certain elements who gave ethnic colour to the crisis in a bid to create further chaos and cause more bloodshed in Karachi.”

“However, the conspiracy hatched by these elements cannot work as political groups have already begun discussing ways to promote and preserve peace in Karachi,” he said.

He did not identify which “elements” were responsible.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has alleged that Musharraf’s government and his allies “deliberately sought to foment violence” in Karachi while police did nothing to stop it.