A man comforts a relative mourning lawyer Kausar Saqlain and his two sons who were killed by gunmen in Karachi yesterday.
KARACHI: Attackers shot dead a lawyer and his two sons aged 12 and 15 in Karachi yesterday in a suspected sectarian attack, police said, the latest in a wave of violence against Pakistan’s Shias.
The men, on a motorbike, gunned down high court lawyer Kausar Saqlain and his sons Owais Abbas and Mohammad Abbas as he took them to school.
“Apparently it seems a sectarian killing,” Iqbal Mahmood, the Karachi police chief, told AFP, though he said the case was still under investigation.
Karachi, a city of 18 million people, contributes 42 percent of Pakistan’s GDP but is rife with murders and kidnappings and has been plagued for years by ethnic, sectarian and political violence. Shias make up around 20 percent of Pakistan’s population, which is dominated by the Sunni. They are increasingly coming under attack.
A car bomb in a Shiite neighbourhood in Karachi in March killed 50 people, the fourth in a series of major attacks on the community since January 10 that killed more than 250 people.
Lawyers boycotted proceedings of the provincial High Court on Tuesday to mourn and condemn the death of Saqlain and his two sons.
“We strongly condemn the killings of our colleague and his two sons and we called off activities at the court,” said Mustafa Lakhan, president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association. AFP
