KARACHI: 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 said, 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 tyres 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.

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.

"It is a conspiracy to ignite sectarian clashes in the city," said Allama Hasan Turabi, a Shi'ite cleric.

Meanwhile, tribesmen seeking regional autonomy set off bombs in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan on Saturday and yesterday, destroying electricity towers but causing no casualties, officials said.

Two bombs went off early yesterday in the suburbs of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, but only shattered window panes in nearby buildings, police said.

On Saturday, three power towers were blown up in Nasirabad district, 220km southeast of Quetta, suspending electricity supply to parts of the province.

The top local official of the district, Sayed Jamali, said that three towers were razed to the ground and a fourth partially damaged by the explosions.