Pakistani Shia Muslims shot dead

Recent killings have outraged Karachi's Shia community

A senior Pakistani defence official of the Shia Muslim faith has been shot dead outside his home in the southern port city of Karachi.

Syed Zafar Hussain, director of the Defence Ministry's research department, was shot five times as he was getting into his car in the Karachi district of Nazimabad.

It looks like a sectarian-related killing but we will also investigate some other options

Provincial Home Secretary Brigadier Mukhtar Sheikh

The killing follows a growing number of attacks in recent days in which a number of prominent Shia Muslims have been killed.

In a second attack, unidentified gunmen shot dead a Shia religious leader, Rizwan-ul Hasan Shah, on his way to a mosque in the eastern city of Lahore.

An unidentified gunman is also reported to have fled from the scene of the killing in Karachi with two accomplices.

An extremist Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has said it carried out the attack against Mr Hussain and against the managing director of Pakistan's state-run oil company Shaukat Mirza who was shot dead last week.

Provincial Home Secretary Brigadier Mukhtar Sheikh told French news agency AFP: "It looks like a sectarian-related killing but we will also investigate some other options."

Mr Hussain was a Shia Muslim and similar killings in the past has been blamed on Sunni Muslim hardliners.

Sectarian attacks

Over the past several years, Karachi has been the scene of sectarian violence between extreme Shia and Sunni groups.

The latest incident comes days after the managing director of Pakistan State Oil, Shaukat Mirza, was shot dead by gunmen in what police suspect was a religiously-motivated killing.

Two high-profile politicians - former Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Siddique Kanju and a former provincial assembly member - were also killed by masked gunmen over the weekend.

"[The] recent killings are a serious challenge and we will do everything possible to arrest their killers," Brigadier Sheikh said.