The attack, most likely a sectarian killing, comes after a suicide bomber ran into a crowd of mourners at the funeral of a slain local Shia Muslim leader, killing 30 people, and triggering riots in the town. -AP

PESHAWAR A Shia Muslim couple were shot dead on Saturday while riding a motorbike through a restive town in northwest Pakistan, in what police said was a sectarian murder.

Mohammed Sharif, a low-ranking anti-terrorist court official in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, and his wife died when unknown gunmen, also on a motorbike, drove past and sprayed them with bullets, a senior police official said.

`It was a targeted killing,` local police official Ehsanullah Khan told AFP.

Khan said the couple lived in a small Shia community close to Pakistans semi-autonomous tribal region of South Waziristan, a Taliban stronghold.

The two gunmen escaped after the shooting, the official said.

Dera Ismail Khan has a history of sectarian violence.

On February 20, a suicide bomber ran into a crowd of mourners at the funeral of a slain local Shia Muslim leader, killing 30 people, and triggering riots in the town.

Shias account for some 20 percent of Pakistans mostly Sunni Muslim population of 160 million.

Although the two groups usually coexist peacefully, more than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence since the late 1980s.