PESHAWAR, March 18: An unidentified armed man shot dead a lawyer and injured his assistant seriously on Dalazak Road here on Monday morning, police said.

They said that lawyer Zahir Abbas Naqvi was on his way to the district courts on a motorcycle along with his assistant Syed Ghulam Nabi Shah when an unidentified man opened firing on them.

Both of them were injured seriously in the attack. They were shifted to Lady Reading Hospital where the lawyer succumbed to his wounds. The deceased lawyer and his injured assistant belong to Wadpaga, a village on the outskirts of Peshawar.

“We were riding a motorcycle and as soon as we reached Dalazak Road a man armed with a pistol fired at us,” injured Mr Shah told police. He said that after firing at them, the assailant went to a motorcyclist, who was waiting for him at a short distance, and fled the scene.

Mr Naqvi was the second lawyer, who was assassinated during the past few weeks. Another senior lawyer Malik Jarar was shot dead at Gulbahar on Feb 8 when he was taking his children to a local private school.

A police official said that the deceased had no enmity. It seemed a sectarian issue, he added. He said that efforts were made to get a clue about the attackers.

Imamia Students Organisation (ISO) has condemned the murder of the lawyer, saying government has failed to stop the target killings of innocent people in Peshawar.

A spokesman of ISO told Dawn that several members of Shiite community were killed but no killer had been arrested so far.