|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
By Owais Tohid
KARACHI, May 18 (AFP)-Police reported unidentified gunmen shot dead a prominent Pakistani Sunni Muslim scholar and one of his colleagues here on Thursday in a suspected sectarian attack, sparking-off a series of protests in the port city. Maulana Mohammad Yusuf Ludhianvi, a senior teacher at a large Islamic seminary in Karachi and a well-known author, died in a hail of bullets as four assailants opened fire at his car with automatic weapons. His colleague, Abdul Rehman, who was driving, was also killed. A son of Ludhianvi and another person were injured, a police officer said. Hospital staff said the pair were in a critical condition. Four men riding on two motorbikes attacked as Ludhianvi left a mosque in central Naseerabad neighborhood. Immediately after the killings, groups of bearded followers of Ludhianvi took to the streets in different parts of the city, forcing shopkeepers to suspend business. They pelted vehicles with stones and torched at least one private jeep in Naseerabad and blocked traffic by burning tires, witnesses said. Hundreds of followers thronged the hospital where Lundhianvi's body and the injured were taken. They recited verses from the Holy Quran. Describing the killing as "targeted", senior police official Sardar Majeed Dasti said it was too early to blame anyone but did not rule out a sectarian motive in the assassination. Over the past month, seven members from the minority Shiite Muslim community, including two lawyers and a doctor, have been killed in Karachi in suspected sectarian attacks. Ludhianvi use to teach at the Jamia Uloom-i-Islami seminary, the second largest in the country. The institution has been linked with Afghanistan's Islamic Taliban government. The 80-year-old scholar was author of dozens of books on Islam and wrote regularly on Islamic topics in leading Urdu-language newspaper Jang. Seminary officials condemned the assassination, demanding an immediate arrest of the killers. "It is sad and shocking not only for us but for the whole Islamic world. He was a great scholar and well respected among all Islamic groups," said Jamal Abdul Nasir, a close associate of the slain scholar. "He was just a scholar and had no enmity with anybody. He was killed by anti-Islam elements," said Nasir. As tensions gripped several parts of the city, authorities beefed up security and police intensified patrols. Karachi has a history of political, ethnic and religious violence that has claimed more than 4,000 lives during the last four years. |
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
