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Shiite Defense Ministry Official Slain in Pakistan
KARACHI, July 30 (News Agencies) - Gunmen shot dead two Pakistani Shiites Monday, including a defense ministry official, in what police fear could be the second high-profile sectarian attack in two weeks.
Syed Zafar Hussain was the second prominent Shiite official to be killed in cold blood here in five days, raising concerns that the vicious cycle of religious violence in Pakistan is taking a new turn for the worse.
Police said Hussain, director of the ministry's research department, was getting into his car when the killer opened fire with an automatic weapon before fleeing with two accomplices.
The 52-year-old was hit five times and died on the way to hospital.
A relative of Hussain who did not want to be identified suggested that the attackers were orthodox religious men because of the beards they wore, and that they had been waiting in a car outside Hussain's house before the murder.
"It looks like a sectarian-related killing, but we will also investigate some other options," Sindh Home Secretary Brigadier Mukhtar Sheikh told AFP.
Last week, the managing director of Pakistan's biggest state-owned oil company - another high-profile Shiite - was gunned down in another suspected religious murder.
"Recent killings are a serious challenge and we will do everything possible to arrest their killers," the home secretary said.
Later Monday, Shiite prayer 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, Hussain's funeral was hijacked by around 300 radical Shiites who took the body on a procession through the center of the city, against the family's wishes.
Police were out in force as the group, mostly hardline members of the Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) Shiite party, pelted cars and buildings with stones and chanted slogans against Sunni extremist groups.
Hussain was later buried in a graveyard in central Karachi.
Local TJP leader Saeed Razi, speaking before the funeral, said "terrorists" were running amok in Karachi and the government was doing nothing.
Hussain's murder followed the assassination of former minister of state for foreign affairs Siddique Kanju and former provincial assembly member Aslam Joya in the central Punjab province on Saturday, but it is believed those killings are not related to sectarian differences.
Pakistan People's Party leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto expressed "deep concern" over the spate of high-profile murders and blamed the 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," she said in a statement.
An underground Sunni group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, later claimed responsibility for the murder of Zafar Hussain and managing director of Pakistan State Oil Shaukat Mirza.
"We claim the responsibility for the murder of the two Shiites," the group said in a statement sent to local newspaper offices.
The message, quoting Lashkar's head Riaz Basra, who is reportedly in hiding in Afghanistan, described the latest killings as a "warning to all Shiites, particularly those in the bureaucracy, to stop conspiracies against Lashkar leaders".
The group has claimed murders of some Shiite leaders in the past also.
Karachi is the scene of frequent religious, political and ethnic violence that has claimed thousands of lives in recent years.
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