ISLAMABAD: Unidentified gunmen riding a motorcycle yesterday killed a senior Shia university director along with his driver in an apparent sectarian attack in central Pakistan, officials said.
The attack comes after several deadly clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslim groups near the capital Islamabad and in the northwest since Friday.
Syed Shabir Hussain Shah, director of student affairs at Gujrat University in Punjab province, was killed while on his way to the campus.
“Gunmen riding a motorbike sprayed bullets on his vehicle when he was about to reach the university in (the) morning. His driver was also killed in the attack,” district police chief Ali Nasir Rizvi said.
“At the moment, we don’t know about the numbers of the attackers, but the incident looks like a targeted killing,” he said.
A colleague said Shah had previously received threats. Pakistan is facing rising sectarian violence, with Sunni militant groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban often attacking gatherings of Shias, who make up some 20 percent of the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim population. Officials suspect the latest attack was in retaliation for violence in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday in which a mainly Sunni mosque was burnt and 10 people, mostly Sunnis, were killed.
The Pakistani Taliban, a Sunni militant group blamed for several sectarian attacks against Shia in the past, threatened yesterday to avenge the Rawalpindi clashes. The city remained under curfew for a second consecutive day yesterday, officials said.
Separately, in the city of Peshawar, two unidentified gunmen riding a motorcycle yesterday killed a policeman guarding a church. AFP
