The Briefing Room
General Category => World News => Topic started by: EC on May 19, 2013, 10:24:39 am
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Via al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/05/2013518193629150615.html
A senior member of Pakistani politician Imran Khan's party has been killed in Karachi in an attack capping a bloody election campaign that has claimed scores of people nationwide.
Zahra Shahid Hussain, the central vice president of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party and one of its founding members, was killed late on Saturday hours before re-elections began on Sunday.
The motives behind the attack remained unclear.
Hussain "was leaving her home for some work when three gunmen attacked her. She thought they wanted to snatch her purse and handed it over to them but they killed her", Firdous Shamim, a local PTI leader, told the AFP news agency.
Police said all three assailants escaped after the attack late on Saturday.
"They shot her with one bullet near her chin and she could not survive," Nasir Aftab, senior police official, told AFP.
Last week's election, during which 150 people were killed nationwide, gave the rival Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which controls Karachi, 18 of 19 national assembly seats in the port city. The constituency where Sunday's repoll is taking place, known blandly as NA-250, is thought to be a stronghold of the PTI.
More at link. Bad luck, a robbery gone wrong, a political assassination or a resurfacing of the more fundamentalist Islam?