Unidentified gunmen have shot dead a Shia activist in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, security sources say.
Local Pakistani security officials said that assailants on motorbikes opened fire on Syed Rais Jafferi, 57, in the Marton Quarters area of the port city on Saturday.
The sources said that Jafferi was rushed to a nearby hospital with fatal injuries following the assault. However, he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
Local media reports said that the assailants managed to flee the scene before security sources arrived.
Jafferi had been targeted in a failed assassination attempt in the Rizvia Society area of Karachi in 2013.
Abid Qaimkhani, a senior police official, said that law enforcement agencies and relevant authorities have launched a probe into the killing.
“It appeared to be a sectarian killing and police are probing as to whether the same suspects targeted him,” Pakistani English-language newspaper Dawnquoted Qaimkhani as saying.
No group or person has yet claimed responsibility for the latest killing, but pro-Taliban militant groups have been blamed for such attacks in the past.
Also on May 13, pistol-wielding gunmen massacred nearly 50 Ismaili Shia Muslims in the same troubled city.
Karachi is home to numerous ethnic groups and has been hit by clashes between rival ethnic and political factions in the past two and half decades. Sectarian, political and ethnic violence in Karachi has claimed the lives of hundreds of people over the past two decades.
Several Shia religious gatherings have been attacked in different parts of the country in recent years.
The country’s Shia leaders have called on the government to bring to justice those behind the ongoing bloodshed and targeted killings.
Several Sunni groups have also denounced the carnage of the Shia Muslims at the hands of the extremists and described the issue as a conspiracy against the country.
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/07/25/421849/Pakistan-Karachi-Syed-Rais-Jafferi-Shia-Abid-Qaimkhani
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