RAWALPINDI: A senior lawyer from Attock was gunned down along with one of his bodyguards by his rivals near the district courts here on Friday.

Mohammad Abbas, the elder son of the slain Mohammad Ameer Khan Advocate, sustained a bullet injury when the police opened fire on his car near Morgah when he was taking his injured father to hospital.

The injured lawyer, Ameer Khan, however, died before reaching the hospital.

The injured son of the deceased lawyer was taken into protective custody by the Civil Lines police after he was given first aid at the District Headquarters Hospital and declared out of danger by the doctors.

The police said Ameer Khan Advocate had come to the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) No II in the Rawalpindi city to attend the proceeding of a case in which he had been nominated as an accused by his rivals in the Attock district.

Hardly Advocate Khan along with his son Abbas and two bodyguards had crossed the Katchery Chowk when their rivals, whose number could not be known, ambushed them.

As a result, one of the security guards died on the spot and the lawyer was critically injured.

After the indiscriminate shooting, hundreds of people who had come to the district courts ran out of the premises in panic.

“There was a cross firing between two rival groups from Attock during which Mohammad Ameer Advocate along with an unidentified person was killed,” Regional Police Officer (RPO) Umar Akhtar Hayat Laleka told Dawn.

He said a police team intercepted a car in which the injured man was being taken away near Morgah presuming that the people who had opened the fire near Katchery Chowk were fleeing in the vehicle towards Soan.

The RPO claimed that the police recovered two Kalashnikovs and two pistols from the car.

“Besides, a magazine (containing bullets) was also recovered from the second deceased who is yet to be identified,” he added.

Though the police reacted promptly and forced the driver of the car to stop, the armed men who attacked the lawyer managed to escape.

The police even could not give the number of people who attacked and killed the two men.

On the complaint of Mohammad Abbas, the Civil Lines police registered a case about the incident under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Lawyers protest Meanwhile, lawyers in the Rawalpindi city announced their decision to protest the killing of their colleague on Saturday (today).