KARACHI: Seven bullet-ridden bodies of suspected militants were found dumped among bushes in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi on Monday, officials said.

The deceased appeared to have been brought to the spot in the western Manghopir neighborhood of the metropolis before being executed, senior police officer Sajid Noor told AFP.

He said that police were probing whether they belonged to the Pakistani Taleban or another militant group.

“Some of them have been identified and from their appearance they looked like Taleban but we don’t have any record of their affiliation to the banned group,” Noor said.

A second police official, Nasir Abbas, confirmed that seven bodies had been found — five who appeared to be in their twenties and two who appeared to be in their late thirties, along with rounds of a 9mm pistol.

Journalist beaten

in latest attack

A Pakistani journalist working with the country’s largest media group has been badly beaten, police said Monday.

Zafar Aaheer, resident editor of newspaper Jang, was attacked when he left his office in the southern city of Multan early Sunday.

Jang is part of the group that owns the country’s widely watched Geo TV and is currently at odds with the powerful military.

In April unidentified attackers shot and injured senior anchor Hamid Mir, who hosted a popular talk show on Geo TV, in the southern city of Karachi.

The TV station became embroiled in a row with the military after it aired allegations that the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was behind Mir’s shooting.

The defense ministry has urged the national media regulator to cancel Geo TV’s broadcasting licence.

The channel is also facing the wrath of the religious community for airing programs which the clerics say are blasphemous and defame Islam.

“We have registered a case of kidnapping, mobile snatching, beating and damaging the car of Zafar Aaheer against unknown people,” Amjad Javed Salimi, a senior police official in Multan, told AFP.