KARACHI, 31 January 2005 — Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot dead a leading Sunni Muslim scholar and his bodyguard yesterday in Pakistan’s restive southern city of Karachi, police said. “Maulana Haroon Al-Qasmi and his guard have been killed in an ambush,” city police chief Tariq Jamil told AFP, describing the victim as a noted scholar. Dozens of angry youths went on the rampage after hearing the news. The rioters attacked a police post, ransacked several shops and burnt tires on roads, witnesses said. “We have reports of a few violent incidents after the murder. The situation is under control now,” Jamil said. Paramilitary rangers had been called in to control the violence. Witnesses said Qasmi and his guard were sitting in their car after leaving a mosque where he used to lead prayers in the downtown Tariq Road area when the two men sprayed them with bullets before fleeing. They died on the way to hospital, Jamil said. The outlawed Sunni militant outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) said Qasmi was one of their activists. “He was a good lawyer and chief of our legal team, which is fighting cases of our workers in the courts,” said SSP spokesman Qari Mohammad Shafiq. Qasmi’s father Maulana Ishaq Al-Qasmi was shot dead at the same place in 2003, Shafiq said. President Pervez Musharraf banned SSP in January 2002 but it re-emerged under a new name of Millat-e-Islamia. SSP leader Maulana Azam Tariq, also an MP, was assassinated in Islamabad in October 2003. The murder of a Sunni cleric before the holy Islamic month of Muharram has raised fear of sectarian clashes. “It is a conspiracy to ignite sectarian clashes in the city,” said Allama Hasan Turabi, a Shiite cleric. Bloodshed involving Sunni and Shiite extremists has claimed more than 4,000 lives since the late 1980s. Shiites form about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 150 million population. Earlier this month 17 people were killed in sectarian riots in the northern towns of Gilgit and Skardu after the assassination of a Shiite Muslim leader. Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital and largest city, has a history of terrorist attacks on western targets and of sectarian violence.
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