KARACHI: A shopkeeper was shot dead on Wednesday in a ‘sectarian attack’ in Samanabad close to the place where an estate agent had been killed the previous day on sectarian grounds. Police said that Mazhar Abbas Rizvi, 35, was targeted at his shop adjacent to his residence in Federal B Area, Block-18 by four armed men riding two motorcycles.

The attackers sped away following the killing, while the victim was taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival, the police said.The victim was Shia and the murder appeared to be an outcome of sectarianism, said Samanabad SHO Shaukat Raza. The Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen spokesperson condemned the murder and said that eight people had been killed in ‘sectarian attacks’ only in Federal B Area’s four blocks namely 16, 17, 18 and 19 in recent days. Yet the authorities failed to have controlled the attacks, he said.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2014