KARACHI, Dec 27: The National shooting championship will be held at Pakistan Naval International Shooting Range from Jan 3 to 9, a spokesman of National Rifle Association of Pakistan (NRAP) announced on Saturday.

Around 100 sharpshooters including men and women will be featuring in the week-long competition in which air rifle, pistol and shotgun events will be contested.

Country’s top shooters representing reigning champions Navy, Army, PAF, Sindh, Punjab, NWFP, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Higher Education Commission (HEC) will be seen in action.

Men will participate in three rifle, five pistol and two shotgun events and women will take part in three rifle and two pistol events.

Olympian Khurram Inam, Commonwealth Games pistol bronze medalist Zahid Ali and Irshad both of Navy and Ahmed Sultan of Sindh would be the star attractions keeping in view their past performances at national and international level.

The championship will also serve as first round of trials for the forthcoming South Asian Federation (SAF) Games being staged held at Islamabad from March 29.

On the basis of performance, the NRAP would be picking probables for the SAF Game training camp to be conducted at Naval Shooting Range.

In the meantime trials to select 12-member Sindh team for the nationals continued at Naval Range.

Sindh Rifle Association would be naming their squad for the event on Sunday. Sindh finished third behind, Navy and Army in the last national championship.

Olympian Khurram Inam and talented Ahmed Sultan are Sindh’s favourites for gold in Skeet event.—APP