The leader of a banned Sunni Islam militant outfit was shot dead in southern Pakistan on Monday, sparking sectarian rioting in Pakistan's biggest city Karachi, police said. Allamma Ali Sher Haideri was killed along with one of his associates in the shooting at Pir Jo Goth village, Khairpur district, in southern Sindh province, senior police official Pir Muhammed Shah said. He said that one of the attackers was killed as Haideri's guards returned fire, and that several of Haideri's men were wounded in the incident. Haideri, said to be in his 50s, led the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a Sunni extremist outfit blamed for a string of sectarian attacks across Pakistan against Shiites. Shah said the killing appeared to be related to a land dispute, not sectarian tension. Haideri's supporters took to the streets in some parts of Karachi, torching two buses and throwing stones at vehicles, witnesses said. They also burned tires, dumped garbage and uprooted trees along the main highway into Karachi causing traffic jams. Pakistan banned Sipah-i-Sahaba after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks as part of a crackdown on extremists. Shah said that all shops and business also shut their doors in Khairpur district, around 400 km (250 miles) north of Karachi. “We have deployed a maximum police force in the district while paramilitary Rangers are also there to help us,” he said. – Agencies Life came to standstill as strikes were observed in towns across Sindh province and in parts of neighboring Punjab province, residents said. “Police... were deployed in sensitive areas and we are protecting the life and property of the people,” said Salman Chaudhry, the police chief in Jhang town, where SSP was formed in the early 1980s. TV journalist shot dead A Pakistani television journalist was shot dead as he made his way to work in the latest killing of a reporter to rock the insurgency-hit country, a press freedom group said on Monday. Aaj TV correspondent Sadiq Bacha Khan, described as a “bold reporter” by the broadcaster, was shot at least 15 times in an ambush Friday outside his workplace in the town of Mardan, North West Frontier Province. “We call upon the authorities in Pakistan to transparently investigate the murder of Bacha Khan,” said David Dadge, director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI).
