ISLAMABAD, Oct 6: The National Assembly was adjourned on Monday without any business to mourn the murder of independent member Maulana Azam Tariq.

Speaker Amir Hussain announced the NA’s adjournment until Tuesday after Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat made a brief statement confirming the killing of the former leader of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan group with four bodyguards in a shooting outside Islamabad about two hours earlier.

In line with an understanding with the leaders of all parliamentary parties, the Speaker did not allow any speeches after the minister’s statement.

But spokesmen for opposition parliamentary groups used a news conference outside the House to demand that the interior minister and the Islamabad police chief resign for the government’s alleged failure to maintain law and order in the capital.

After a two-day weekend recess, the House met in the evening some 70 minutes late as the Speaker apparently waited for a confirmation of initially unconfirmed reports that Maulana Tariq was among the five men killed in their car by unidentified gunmen.

The minister told the House that he sent the inspector-general of police and other senior officials of Islamabad police to the scene immediately after learning of the incident.

Quoting initial information from these officials, he said Maulana Tariq was reported to be one of the five killed.

“His final identification is yet to be made, but his secretary has confirmed that one of the bodies in the mortuary is of Maulana Azam Tariq,” he told the House.

The minister called for an immediate adjournment of the House and promised to inform it of the result of an inquiry that he said was under way.