KARACHI, Pakistan (AhlulBayt News Agency) - Five Shiite Muslims, among them two brothers and a woman were gunned down and as many others wounded in what police described as an armed attack on sectarian grounds in Karachi’s Nazimabad locality on Saturday. It was the fourth such assault in the city during Muharram.
Police said two assailants riding a motorbike stopped outside a house, located at a short distance from the Nazimabad police station and the area headquarters of the Sindh Rangers, where a Muharram mourning ceremony for women was being held inside.
They said that one of the attackers entered a tent put up for men outside the house, pulled out a pistol, fired indiscriminately and rode away, leaving the victims in a pool of blood.
The wounded were rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and the Aga Khan University Hospital.
“Four men were brought dead to the [Abbasi Shaheed] hospital,” said Additional Police Surgeon Dr Rohina Hasan. Doctors at the AKUH declared a man dead on arrival. Three of the wounded, including a teenage boy, were being treated at the health facility.
Dr Hasan said that two wounded women, who were initially treated at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, were later shifted to another hospital.
DIG-West Zulfiqar Larik said that a total of 10 Shia persons sustained bullet wounds and five of them died.
Nazimabad SHO Faizul Hasan said that two brothers were among the deceased.
Witnesses said that not a single police guard was deputed for the security of the majlis (mourning ceremony). However, the police claimed that they had no information about the event.
“The organisers did not inform the police about the majlis,” Sindh police chief A.D. Khowaja told reporters.
Investigators collected 13 spent bullet casings fired by 9mm pistol from the crime scene.
The terrorist group of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi al-Alami claimed responsibility for the attack, though investigators insisted that it was too early to say which group or outfit was involved.
Karachi police chief Mushtaq Mahar said that it appeared to be a sectarian attack. “A group of outlawed Lashkar-i-Jhangvi has been active in the city and the threat will persist until their arrest,” he added.
He said that the spent bullet casings had been sent to a laboratory for a forensic analysis to ascertain whether the same weapon had been used in earlier killings or not. “A cash reward of Rs2 million has also been announced for any person who provides information leading to the arrest of the killers.”
He said that the police decided to provide security to every majlis in the city.
The Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen (biggest Shiite political-religious party in Pakistan) strongly condemned the attack and said that such incidents were the outcome of the “free hand” given to the banned outfits by the federal government, particularly the interior minister.
“This is a fourth such attack against the Shia Mulims and a third one targeting a majlis for women in Muharram,” said an MWM spokesperson. “This reflects the performance of the law enforcers and the provincial government.”
On Oct 17, a Shi'a boy was martyred and seven others were wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded during a majlis of women at the Imambargah Dar-i-Abbas in Liaquatabad. The IED was thrown by two pillion-riders.
On Oct 8, armed motorcyclists shot dead a Shia man and wounded his cousin when they were standing outside a house in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, where a majlis of women was being held.
On the same day, assailants riding a motorbike killed a trustee of an Imambargah (Shiite religious house for mourning) and wounded his son outside their Gulistan-i-Jauhar home as soon as they reached there after attending a majlis.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ)
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), whose roots are in the heartland Punjab province, has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks across the Pakistan especially in Baluchistan, particularly against the Shia Muslims. They have killed hundreds of Shia Muslims in the silence of the government and media.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) was founded in 1996 as a militant offshoot of Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, a Deobandi and anti-Shia group that emerged in the mid-1980s in reaction to class-based conflict and the domestic Pakistani Shia revival. LJ seeks to transform Pakistan into a Deobandi-dominated Salafi/Nasbi state, and primarily targets Shia and other religious minorities, according to National Counter Terrorism Centre of the US Government.
Terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi consider not only the Shias but also Pakistani Sunnis, who venerate shrines of Sufi mystics, as infidels deserving death. In the summer of 2011, Jhangvi sent an open letter to the Shia community in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province and home to around six hundred thousand Shia Muslims. The letter, written in Urdu and signed by the commander of Jhangvi, read:
All Shias are worthy of killing. We will rid Pakistan of [this] unclean people. Pakistan means land of the pure, and the Shias have no right to be here…
…We will make Pakistan their graveyard—their houses will be destroyed by bombs and suicide bombers.
