KARACHI: A 58-year-old doctor was shot dead on Monday evening in a suspected sectarian attack on his clinic in Korangi, bringing the recent death toll of Shia doctors to four in the same locality, according to police and religious party officials.

Dr Shamim Raza was sitting at his clinic in Korangi 1 ½ when gunmen on a motorcycle arrived there and entered the clinic. They went inside his room and attacked him. The victim sustained three bullet wounds and was taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where doctors declared him dead on arrival, said Dr Seemin Jamali, head of the emergency department.

The victim belonged to the Shia community and his murder might be related to sectarianism, said Landhi SP Akhtar Farooq.

The deceased, father of two children, was a resident of Bahadurabad.

“This is the fourth killing of a Shia doctor in the Korangi area over the past three months,” said a spokesperson for the Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen. Condemning the killing of the doctor, the MWM official said nine members of the Shia community had been killed in the Korangi and Landhi areas recently as authorities failed to curb sectarian killings.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2014