KARACHI, 31 July — Gunmen on two motorcycles shot dead a Defense Ministry official yesterday in what police fear could be the second high-profile sectarian attack in two weeks.
Syed Zafar Hussain Zaidi, a director of research at the Defense Ministry, was outside his official residence in the port city of Karachi when he was shot dead, police officials said.
The snipers took aim at Zafar, 50, just as he had clambered into the back seat of his chauffeur-driven car parked outside his Nazimabad residence. The attackers wore masks over their faces. Half of Zafar blood-spattered body fell out the car as the gunmen pumped bullets into him.
Policemen quoted a witness, a shopkeeper in the area, as saying that the attackers fled on their motorcycles in the direction of a nearby industrial zone.
Naveed Zaidi, a close relative of the research director, came out of his house located on the same street minutes after the attack and rushed Zafar who was barely breathing to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
Other witnesses said three motorcycle riders had waited for Zafar outside his house. As soon he came out two of the assailants stood near his car while the third one fired with an automatic weapon.
A hospital coroner who examined the Defense Ministry official’s body said five bullets had been found in the deceased man’s body.
The driver of the vehicle was still inside the house at the time of the attack. Several members of the Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) visited the hospital to condole his death.
This is the fourth high-profile murder in Pakistan and second in the city of Karachi in the past week.
Pakistan State Oil chief Shaukat Mirza, a former minister of state, Siddiq Kanju, and another provincial legislator of Punjab Aslam Joya were the other three victims.
About a month ago two persons were killed outside an imambargah located in the same vicinity of Nazimabad.
Police have taken the driver into custody for questioning.
“It looks like a sectarian-related killing but we will also investigate some other options,” Sindh Home Secretary Brig. Mukhtar Sheikh said.
“Recent killings are a serious challenge and we will do everything possible to arrest their killers,” the home secretary said. A relative of Zafar, who did not want to be identified, said the attackers were bearded.
An underground radical group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi later claimed responsibility for the murder of Zafar and Managing Director of Pakistan State Oil Shaukat Mirza.
"We claim the responsibility for the murder of the two men," the group said in a statement sent to local newspaper offices.
The message, quoting the group’s head Riaz Basra, who is reportedly in hiding in Afghanistan, described the latest killings as a "warning to all member of the Shia community, particularly those in the bureaucracy, to stop conspiracies against Lashkar leaders".
Later yesterday another TJP leader Syed Rizwan Zaidi was shot dead outside a shop in the eastern city of Lahore.
“It is a sectarian murder because so far there is no indication of any personal enmity,” said local Deputy Police Inspector General Shaukat Javed.
In Karachi, Zafar’s funeral was hijacked by some 300 TJP activists who took the body in a procession through the center of the city against the family’s wishes.
Police were out in force as the mob, mostly hard-line members of the TJP, pelted cars and buildings with stones and chanted slogans against extremist groups.
Local TJP leader Saeed Razi, speaking before the funeral, said “terrorists” were running amok in Karachi and the government was doing nothing.
Pakistan People’s Party leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto expressed “deep concern” over the spate of high-profile murders and blamed the military government for failing to ensure law and order.
“It is shocking to see the country sliding into the abyss of anarchy and lawlessness as the wielders of power turn a blind eye to what is happening,” Benazir said in a statement.
