Hundreds of protesters tried to storm the U.S. consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Sunday, leaving at least nine people dead and about 20 injured in violent clashes with police and paramilitary groups, authorities said.

The violence occurred hours after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Police and Karachi hospital officials said at least 25 people were injured in the clashes, several of them in critical condition.

Sumaiya Saeed Tariq, a police surgeon at the city’s main government hospital, confirmed that six bodies and several injured people were initially taken to the facility. However, three seriously injured people died, raising the death toll to nine.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan wrote to X that it is monitoring reports of ongoing demonstrations at the U.S. Consulate General in Karachi and Lahore, as well as calls for additional protests at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the Consulate General in Peshawar. It advised Americans living in Pakistan to monitor local news, stay aware of their surroundings, avoid large groups and keep their travel registration with the U.S. government up to date.

Karachi is the capital of southern Sindh province and the largest city in Pakistan.

Irfan Baloch, a senior police official, said protesters briefly attacked the area around the US consulate but later dispersed. He denied baseless reports that parts of the consulate building were set on fire. But he said protesters set a nearby police station on fire and smashed windows at the consulate before security forces arrived and took control of the area.

Witnesses said dozens of Shiite demonstrators continued to gather about a kilometer away from the consulate, calling on others to join them. It said one of the demonstrators tried to burn a window at the consulate before security forces arrived and dispersed the protesters.

In response, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi appealed for calm.

“All Pakistanis share the sorrow of the Iranian people following the martyrdom of Ayatollah Khamenei,” he said in a statement. He described the day as “a day of remembrance for the Muslim ummah and the people of both Iran and Pakistan,” but called on people to protest peacefully and not take the law into their own hands.

Shiites make up approximately 15% of Pakistan’s population of approximately 250 million people and represent one of the largest Shia communities in the world. They have frequently held anti-Israel and anti-US rallies in the past, but clashes of this scale are rare.

Reuters