KARACHI, Jan 15: A senior member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and former naib nazim of SITE Town was gunned down on Saturday, yards away from his home in Orangi Town, becoming the latest victim of the fresh wave of the targeted killings that claimed 20 lives in three days, police and party sources said.

“According to witnesses, Mr Khan came out of his home in the first half of the day according to his daily routine,” said an official at the Mominabad police station. “When he was backing up, two men emerged on a motorbike, intercepted his car and fired multiple shots at him. He sustained three bullet wounds and died on the spot. The attackers meanwhile escaped the scene.”

Nine spent bullet shells of .30-bore and 9mm pistols were found at the crime-scene.

The body was shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where a large number of MQM leaders and activists gathered. The father of three, Mr Khan originally hailed from Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and, as the MQM said, had been associated with the party for more than 15 years.

He was elected naib nazim of SITE Town in the 2005 non-party elections of local bodies from the platform of the Haq Parast Panel backed by the MQM. He held the office till 2010, when the Karachi Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal-led local government completed its four-year term.

Condemning the murder, the MQM leadership demanded action against the killers targeting “innocent Karachiites on ethnic grounds”.

“Syed Badshah Khan was a senior member of the MQM's Muttahida Organising Committee,” Gul Faraz Khattak, a member of the MQM's coordination committee, told a press conference at the party's headquarters, Nine Zero. “We strongly condemn the brutal incident and expect of the government and law-enforcement agencies to move against the criminal elements who have held the people of Karachi hostage.” A 45-year-old man was shot dead in Surjani Town late in the evening.

The area police said that armed men on a motorbike fired at a group of people outside a roadside tea stall in Section L-1 of Surjani Town. Although most of the people escaped the deadly attack, the victim, identified as Ziarat Khan, was hit by three bullets and died on his way to a hospital.

They said that the victim was living in the same area, where he was running a cement block manufacturing facility for the last several years.

As two-day violence claimed 21 lives, armed attacks on people mainly in the west zone of the police organisational structure kept the residents in persistent fear for a fourth consecutive day.

Some eight people were injured in separate incidents of firing in certain areas, including SITE, Orangi Town, New Karachi, Abul Hasan Ispahani Road and Baldia Town. Frequent gunfire kept businesses closed in parts of Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Orangi Town, along Abul Hasan Ispahani Road and New Karachi.

Police sources said they overnight rounded up more than a dozen suspects in different “affected pockets of Orangi Town”. However, senior officials refused to share the number of people picked up in the 'search operation' conducted mainly in Bukhari Colony of Orangi Town and Qasba Colony.

Sindh home minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza, who surprisingly stayed silent over the fresh wave of violence, issued a directive to officials to set up a joint investigation team to trace the cause and people behind the deadly incidents.

“Sindh home Minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza has directed the IG police to constitute a joint special investigation team of Crime Investigation Department, Special Investigation Unit, Anti-violent Crime Cell, Special Branch and Pakistan Rangers to investigate comprehensively into the incidents of targeted killings and firing in Karachi and take all possible measures for arrest of the culprits,” said a home ministry statement.

“The minister has asked the police not to harass the peaceful and law-abiding citizens and called for effective exchange of intelligence reports and deploying the personnel in plain clothes in affected areas to ensure security of life and property of the citizens.”