| Masked gunmen killed an ethnic Pashtun politician known as a close friend of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border on Wednesday, officials said. Shah Alam Khan was traveling in a vehicle when two armed men riding in another car opened fire and seriously wounded him in Wana, the main town of Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region. "He succumbed to his injuries on his way to hospital," a local government official said. Khan, a local leader of the Pashtun-nationalist Pukhtunkhuwa Milli Awami Party, was considered a close friend of Karzai and met him several times in visits to Afghanistan. South Waziristan, about 400 km (250 miles) southwest of capital Islamabad, has long been a hideout for al Qaeda-linked militants and officials said they were investigating whether they were involved in the killing. |