Karachi: Four attackers on motorcycles opened fire on the car of a Pakistani lawmaker yesterday, critically wounding him and killing his driver in an attack that raised tensions in the country’s largest city Karachi. Rashid Godil, a legislator from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) opposition party, was in his parked car at a traffic light in the eastern Bahadurabad neighbourhood when the unidentified men began firing.
“The attackers came from behind the car and opened fire, injuring Rashid Godil critically,” Abid Kaimkhani, a senior police officer, said. Godil’s driver died in the attack, he added.
Senior police officer Javed Jiskani said that bullet casings taken from the scene matched a 9mm pistol, adding that CCTV footage was being examined. A spokesman at the Liaquat National Hospital, where Godil was taken, said the politician was struck by five bullets to his head, jaw and chest and a team of doctors was trying to stabilise him. Senior MQM leader Haidar Abbas Rizvi said the next 48 hours would be crucial for Godil.
The shooting comes a week after members of the MQM, which dominates politics in Karachi, offered their resignations from their seats in parliament over what they described as a campaign of victimisation against them. The resignations have not yet been formally accepted by the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which is trying to get the party to reverse its decision.
The MQM has the power to shut down Karachi, Pakistan’s economic hub and a city of roughly 20 million people, and its activists have been accused of using violence in the past. The party denies the charges and says it has been unfairly targeted in a police and paramilitary crackdown on violence in the city that began in 2013.
Shops and offices closed for business in the east of the city after the news, while the University of Karachi postponed examinations that were to be held in the evening. Tensions have also been rising in recent months between MQM chief Altaf Hussain, who rules the party from London, and the country’s powerful military establishment.
The rift widened in June, when Hussain, in an address to his workers accused the paramilitary Rangers of torturing and killing party workers and dumping their mutilated bodies on roadsides. The party has accused law enforcement agencies of the extrajudicial killing of 40 of its supporters and the forcible “disappearance” of 150 more.
The attack also comes two days after suicide bombers killed Shuja Khanzada, a senior Pakistani minister along with 15 others. It was later claimed by the Pakistani Taliban who said it was revenge for the killing of a sectarian militant commander.
AFP
