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Shia Scholar Killed in Peshawar

by AFP
File Photo

File Photo

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on Allama Alim Al-Musvi while he was walking to the mosque.

Gunmen killed a Shia Muslim scholar in Peshawar on Monday, police and hospital officials said.

Allama Alim Al-Musvi was shot while walking to the mosque in the historic Qissa Khawani Bazaar of Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. “Two gunmen opened fire on the scholar and escaped in the narrow streets when he came out of his house and walked towards the mosque,” said local police official Fazal Jan.

Al-Musvi was a locally respected scholar and used to deliver sermons at special Shia gatherings, he added. A government hospital spokesman, Jamil Khan, confirmed the death.

There has been a rise in sectarian violence in Pakistan after several deadly clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslim groups near Islamabad in November. On Nov. 19 gunmen killed a senior Shia university director along with his driver in Lahore, while another Shia leader and his guard were killed in Karachi in early December. Three days later, Shamsur Rehman Muawiya, chief of the Sunni extremist organization Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat for Punjab province, was killed in Lahore. On Jan. 3 gunmen killed two senior members of a hardline Sunni Muslim group in a rare attack in the Pakistani capital.

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