KARACHI, June 12: A trader was gunned down and his younger brother wounded at their shop in the Shershah scrap market on Tuesday, police said.

They said that the gun attack took place at around 1.15pm when two men came to the shop on a motorcycle.

“The employees at the shop were told to move away by the assailants, who fired at the two brothers and rode away,” said a senior police officer.

The wounded men were rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where Karrar Ali, 60, was pronounced dead on arrival while his younger brother Zakir Ali, 42, was admitted for treatment.

Both men were elder brothers of Shakir Ali, a former member of the Sindh Assembly belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

The police said that spent bullet casings found at the crime scene suggested that a 9mm pistol had been used in the killing.

“The incident is not related to extortion. It was an act of targeted killing,” said SSP-West Amir Farooqui.

A large number of MQM activists and party leaders reached the hospital after getting the news of the attack.

The Shershah scrap market was shut in protest over the killing. Some markets in central district were also shut when news of the killing spread in the city.

The police said that the elder brother Karrar had been in the metal sheets business for the past 45 years in the same market. The slain trader was a resident of F.B Area’s Block 13 and a father of four.

Shershah market president Malick Zahid Dehlavi said that the gun attack was mounted at a shop not far from the Jehanabad police post.

Following the October 2010 Shershah carnage, 164 policemen were deployed in the market for security but currently their number had come down to 64, he added.

“At the time of the killing, two policemen along with a police mobile van were present at a police post in the market but they didn’t do anything,” he said.

In October 2010, 14 men were mowed down and nearly a dozen others were wounded when armed assailants targeted shopkeepers in the automotive section of the Shershah scrap market. Since then, most of the businesses had been relocated to different parts of the city, said another office-bearer of the market association.