LANDI KOTAL, Aug 13: Haji Namdar, head of a religious militant group, was shot dead in a mosque in the Bara area of Khyber Agency on Wednesday morning.

According to an eyewitness, the chief of the ‘Amr Bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkir Organisation’, was delivering a sermon at the Takia mosque when a boy stood up and fired on him with a Kalashnikov. He died on the spot.

The boy, identified as Mujahid Khan, was overpowered by activists of the organisation and whisked away.

Munsif Khan, a spokesman for the group, told Dawn that the killer belonged to Bar Qambar Khel tribe of Haji Namdar and was an activist of his organisation.

Activists of the organisation, commonly known as the Haji Namdar group, later nominated Hukam Khan as their new Amir. Munsif Khan said that besides the boy, four men had been detained for their alleged involvement in the assassination.

Haji Namdar had escaped an attempt on his life in May this year when a teenaged suicide bomber blew himself up in the same mosque while trying to present a pistol to him. The Namdar group blamed Hakeenullah, a close aide of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan leader Baitullah Mehsood, for the attack. Hakeemullah had accepted responsibility of the suicide attack.

The two militant leaders developed differences when the Namdar group expelled Hakeemullah and his armed supporters from Bara in April this year for their alleged involvement in the kidnapping of two World Food Programme officials from the main Peshawar-Torkhum road on April 21.

Haji Namdar also escaped a missile attack on his compound on June 30. He blamed Nato forces for the attack which left six of his close aides dead.