Gunmen shot and killed a doctor and a shopkeeper in separate attacks Saturday on minority Shiite Muslims in the southern city of Karachi, and the deaths sparked rowdy protests by hundreds of youths, police said. Assailants on a motorcycle killed the physician, Ibn-e-Hasan, 45, as he and his wife were driving to his clinic in Karachi's Malir neighborhood, police official Ghulam Hamid said. His wife was unhurt. No one claimed responsibility for the killing and the assailants escaped, Hamid said. The motive behind Hasan's killing was not immediately clear.
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Hours later in the same neighborhood, two men on a motorcycle gunned down another Shiite, Syed Wajhi Haider, police official Wajahat Hussain said. Haider was sitting in his small general store at the time, he said. The majority of Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims, and most of them live in peace with Shiites. But militant extremist groups from both sects have emerged in recent years and routinely carry out attacks. Most of the victims have been Shiite.
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After the doctor's death, hundreds of Shiites, mostly youths, took to the streets in the poor Malir neighborhood, chanting anti-government slogans and demanding that the killers be arrested. Some of the demonstrators blocked a highway and a railway track, disrupting traffic. They also damaged several cars by pelting them with stones, and they burned old tires. Police said they were trying to restore order by negotiating with Shiite leaders. "We do not want to use force because they are already in pain," a police official, Altaf Leghari, told The Associated Press. |