Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot dead a Pakistani Shiite scholar and injured two people including his daughter yesterday in a suspected sectarian attack here, police and community leaders said. Ghulam Hussain Najafi, vice-principal of the Jamia Al-Muntazir Shiite seminary, was being driven by his daughter to a mosque here when two attackers opened fire on the vehicle, police said. "It appears to be a sectarian killing," local police officer Khalid Ahmed said. The attackers fled on their motorbikes after the attack, said the slain scholar's colleague, Syed Abbas Sherazi.Najafi's daughter and another female student at the seminary were injured and were being treated in hospital, he added. Angry youths and teachers from the Shiite school took to the streets after the murder, witnesses said. Chanting slogans against sectarian violence, they demanded the immediate arrest of the attackers. Sherazi said two suspected terrorists, who were chasing Najafi on a motorbike, opened fire after a street vendor blocked the passage by placing his cart in front of the Shiite scholar's vehicle. "The assailants and the vendor fled after the attack," he said, suspecting that the vendor was also involved in the murder plot. The killing of Najafi who was in his early 50s, could be linked to a recent slaying of a top Sunni police officer in the northern city of Gilgit, he said. "It appears to be linked to the situation in Gilgit," he added.