A family of six Shiite Muslims were found murdered at their home in Pakistanâs eastern city Lahore early on Friday, police said. âSix people including a one-year old girl were shot in the head,â police chief of Lahore city Tariq Saleem Dogar told AFP. âThe motive appears to be sectarian.â
The attack is the latest bloodshed against Shiites, a minority among Pakistanâs Sunni-dominated 140 million Muslims, in recent months. Last Friday a suicide bomber killed 14 Shiite worshippers at a mosque in southern port city Karachi. The family ran a primary school for Shiites in Lahoreâs dense low-income neighbourhood of Mughalpura. Anti-Shiite slogans were scrawled across the walls of their home. Rival Sunni and Shiite fanatics have been killing the followers of each othersâ communities for some two decades in Pakistan. A lull in sectarian violence immediately following the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan has been replaced by an upswing in sectarian killings since last year, with Shiites bearing the brunt of attacks. The violence has claimed an estimated 4,000 lives. Officials have linked radical Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) to Fridayâs blast in Karachi, which sparked violent protests from Shiites that left one person dead. |