KARACHI, Feb 14: Two activists of the Ahle Sunaat Wal Jamaat were gunned down in yet another targeted attack in the Nazimabad area on Tuesday, police said.

They said that two friends — Shabbir Wakeel, 35, and Ateeq Hanif, 40, — were riding a motorbike when armed men in a white Suzuki Hi-roof intercepted them near a rickshaw stand in Nazimabad No 2 within the remit of the Shamim Shaheed police post and opened fire on them.

The assailants managed to escape, leaving the two men seriously wounded. The police shifted the wounded to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where doctors pronounced Mr Wakeel dead. The second victim, Mr Hanif, also died during treatment.

Following the incident, a large number of activists of the ASWJ, formerly banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, reached the hospital.

Official in charge of the Shamim Shaheed post Rao Ehsan said that both the victims were affiliated with the ASWJ and investigators suspected that the killings were sectarian in nature.

He said that the assailants used 9mm pistols. Both victims lived in Firdous Colony, a locality adjoining Gulbahar.

Mr Wakeel ran a confectionery shop and Mr Hanif was an air-conditioning technician.

A spokesman for the ASWJ, Maulana Taj Hanafi, said that both victims were affiliated with the Gulbahar unit of the ASWJ’s organisational structure. He said that at least 15 party activists had been killed in the current year and the government had failed to arrest any killer.

Meanwhile, funeral prayers of the victims were offered in Khajji ground, Nazimabad, and they were buried in separate area graveyards.

Till late in the night, no case was registered regarding the killing of the ASWJ men.