MUZAFFARABAD: A lawyer was gunned down in his home in the southern Mirpur district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Saturday by two suspects impersonating police officials.

According to police sources and residents, the assassins arrived at the residence of Advocate Waqar Altaf in subdivision Dadyal on a motorbike at about 11:15am and told his spouse that they had to serve a court summons on him.

The spouse allowed the duo to enter the house where they sprayed Mr Altaf with bullets in his drawing room and fled from the scene. The lawyer died on the spot.

Earlier in April this year, Mr Altaf had sustained bullet wounds when he was fired upon by two motorcyclists while on his way to the courts.

Two killed by lightning

Two cousins were killed and another four were injured in a remote high-altitude hamlet of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Saturday after being struck by lightning, police said.

The affected persons had moved to Danni hamlet from the revenue village Mandhar in the summer season as part of their yearly tradition where the lightning struck their mud houses, adjacent to each other, at about 9:30am amid heavy downpour, said a police official from Forward Kahuta, the district headquarters of Haveli.

He said the lightning killed Mohammad Farhan, 13, son of Rasheed Rathore and Mahnoor Fatima, 12, daughter of Naseem Rathore, on the spot while Maimoona, 14, and her one-year-old sibling Ayesha, daughters of Naseem, Nadira, 16, daughter of Rasheed and Saima, 17, daughter of Abdul Hameed Bajaar were injured.

The injured were hospitalised in the District Headquarters Hospital, Forward Kahuta, he said.

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2022