KARACHI, Pakistan: Gunmen riding in two cars and a motorcycle opened fire on a pick up truck carrying a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in this violence-prone city Sunday, killing him and wounding four other people, police said. The cleric - Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai - died of gunshot wounds in a nearby hospital. He was attacked while he was driving to an Islamic seminary that he headed in an eastern Karachi neighborhood, said Fayyaz Qureshi, a Karachi police official. A body guard of Shamzai returned fire wounding one of the six attackers, Qureshi said, quoting witnesses. Among the four people who were injured in the attack on Shamzai was one of his sons, a nephew, his driver and two body guards, Qureshi said. None of them were listed to be seriously hurt. Shamzai, who was in his 70s, headed Jamia Islamia Binori Town, where thousands of students get Islamic education. His killing is likely to spark violence by his supporters. No one was arrested for the attack on Shamzai and there was no claim of responsibility for involvement.More, from Khaleej Times...
Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, who had called for a âjihadâ, or holy war, against the United States after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was wounded along with his son, a relative, a bodyguard and a driver, police said. âAs soon as we sat in the car, we heard gun shots and we immediately ducked,â the clericâs relative Rafiuddin told reporters. âI felt a strong pain in my leg, I had been shot and than I saw Mufti Shamzai Sahib covered in blood.â
| I do hope he wasn't killed instantly... |
| Bloodthirsty Shiites? MQM hard boyz? Perv's hard boyz? |
| Migrating Esquimaux? |
| Motorcycles of Doomâ¢. A nice touch, that... |
âThere is heavy shelling of tear-gas and police fired gun shots in the air to disperse the crowd,â another witness said. Protesters set fire to a police station, torching two parked vehicles and partly damaging the building, police said. Another witness told Reuters police used tear-gas to disperse smaller crowds at several other places.
Ishratul Ibad, the governor of the province of Sindh, whose capital is Karachi, appealed for calm. âI appeal to the people and to his supporters as well, we all equally share the grief, but cooperate with us and we will certainly catch his killers,â Ibad said on Geo television.
Shamzai belonged to the hardline Deobandi school of Islamic thought, which has provided thousands of fighters to the Taleban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Several Pakistani Islamic militant groups considered him their spiritual leader. His seminary, Jamiat-ul-Uloom-il-Islamaiyyah, also known as Banuri Town, taught many students who went on to become important members of the Taleban regime in Kabul. Two very senior clerics of the seminary were also murdered in 1999 and 1998. Shamzai led a delegation of Pakistani clerics and intelligence officials to the Taleban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar with a message from the government soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
| When he reportedly told Mullah Omar not to give in... |
Karachi has suffered a spate of militant and sectarian violence in the recent past. Fifteen Shiâite worshippers were killed this month in a suicide bomb attack on a mosque and a policeman was killed when two car bombs went off this week near the home of the US consul. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of Pakistanâs largest Islamic political party, the Jamaat-e-Islami,