Shi'ite activist killed in northwest Pakistan
Source: Reuters
TANK, Pakistan, March 9 (Reuters) - Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead a Shi'ite activist in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, a day after a member of a Sunni Muslim militant group was gunned down in a similar attack, police said. Pakistan's minority Shi'ite Muslim community is observing a major religious commemoration on Friday and Saturday and several suspected Sunni militants detained recently told police they had been planning attacks at this time. No one claimed responsibility for killing Anwar Abbas Shah as he sat in a shop in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, 270 km (168 miles) southwest of Islamabad. Shah ran a community centre and police said they suspected it was a sectarian attack. "He died on the spot while a man working for him was wounded," said senior police officer Aslam Khattak. "It appears to be a sectarian attack but we're investigating." Pakistan has been bedevilled by sectarian violence for years. Thousands have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks by Sunni and Shi'ite militants since the 1980s. On Thursday, gunmen killed a member of a banned Sunni Muslim militant group in Dera Ismail Khan. Shi'ite Muslims commemorate Chelum, or Arbain, on Friday and Saturday, a ceremony marking the end of a 40-day period of mourning for the Prophet Mohammad's grandson who died in AD 680. Shi'ites make up about 15 percent of the Sunni-majority country's population.
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