Three Sunni Muslim clerics killed in Pakistan
| Publisher | Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty |
| Publication Date | 12 March 2010 |
| Cite as | Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Three Sunni Muslim clerics killed in Pakistan, 12 March 2010, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/4bab90f223.html [accessed 4 June 2023] |
| Disclaimer | This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. |
March 12, 2010
KARACHI (Reuters) – Four people, including three Muslim clerics, were gunned down and one wounded in a drive-by shooting in Pakistan's biggest city of Karachi in a suspected sectarian attack, police said.
Saeed Ahmed Jalalpuri, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric, was ambushed by three gunmen riding on a motor-bike as he was traveling in a car with his three colleagues late on March 11.
"The attackers opened indiscriminate firing on the car of Mr. Saeed Jalalpuri as he was returning home after delivering a sermon in his mosque," Karachi police chief Wasim Ahmed told Reuters.
Two other clerics and a friend of Jalalpuri traveling in the car were killed while another man was wounded, he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
"It is a targeted attack. It could be a sectarian attack. We are looking at all possibilities," Ahmed said.
Earlier on March 11, gunmen attacked a radical Sunni Muslim cleric, Abdul Ghafoor Nadeem, in the city. Nadeem was wounded but his son was killed in the attack.
Thousands of people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks by rival militants from Pakistan's majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite Muslim sects in the past two decades.
Thirty-one people were killed, many of them Shi'ites, in two bomb attacks in Karachi last month when Shi'ites were celebrating a religious ceremony.
Forty-three people were killed in a bomb attack on a Shi'ite procession marking Ashura, one of the most important events in the Shi'ite calendar, in December. Officials suspect Al-Qaeda-backed Sunni Muslim militants were behind these attacks.
Link to original story on RFE/RL website
