RAWALPINDI: Two activists of Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat (ASWJ) were killed at Chakri Road on Thursday night, police said.

Local ASWJ leader Mufti Tanveer Alam told Dawn that Qari Saifullah and Aslam Shakir were going to Saddar on a motorcycle after attending a conference at Mohra Sharif when they were shot dead by two motorcycle riders near the Dhamial airbase.

Saifullah, 36, was the treasurer of the ASWJ Rawalpindi chapter while the 22-year-old Shakir worked as a khateeb and was affiliated with the party.

A large number of ASWJ workers blocked Murree Road in protest against the incident and demanded the government arrest the killers.

They said 13 activists of the party had been killed in Rawalpindi during the last nine months but none of the culprits had been arrested so far.

“Today’s attack on ASWJ workers was another in a series of targeted killings of our workers,” Mufti Tanveer added.

Regional Police Officer Akhtar Omer Hayat Laleka told Dawn that a police team had been constituted to trace the killers. He said the police had already been working on the previous incidents of target killings. He expressed the hope that the cases would be traced soon.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2014