File Photo. Rizwan Tabassum—AFP
No one has claimed responsibility for the murders of Sunni leader, Shia lawyer in separate incidents.
A hardline Sunni leader and a prominent Shia lawyer were shot dead in two separate incidents in Karachi on Wednesday, police said.
Unknown gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed lawyer Ghulam Hussain Bokhari outside his house before fleeing, said senior police official Akhtar Farooq. Hussain belonged to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which controls Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital.
Farooq said that police are investigating whether it was a politically related killing or a sectarian murder.
In a separate shooting, gunmen on motorcycles shot Muhammad Fayyaz Khan, secretary general of Sunni hardline outfit Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), and his driver while they were traveling in an industrial area of Karachi, said local police official Azfar Mahesar.
It is widely believed that the sectarian group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan renamed itself ASWJ after being banned in 2002. Nobody has claimed responsibility for either of the attacks.
Pakistan has suffered a rising tide of sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups against minority Shias, who make up around 20 percent of the population. A suicide bomber last month killed 61 people at a Shia mosque in Shikarpur. Around 1,000 Shias have been killed in the past two years in Pakistan, with many of the attacks claimed by banned Sunni militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.