Two members of Pakistan's minority Ahmadi community were on Saturday shot dead allegedly by the radical Islamist group members in the country's Punjab province, police said. The two deceased -- Ghulam Sarwar, 62, and Rahat Ahmad Bajwa, 30, -- were shot at by two persons in separate attacks in Mandi Bahauddin district of Punjab, some 250 kms from Lahore.
The police said Ghulam Sarwar was on his way back home after offering Zuhr (afternoon) prayers at an Ahmadiyya place of worship when an unidentified man opened fire on him, killing him on the spot.
In the other incident, Rahat Bajwa was returning to his house from a catering centre he owned when a 17-year-old seminary student opened fire on him, killing him on the spot. Police managed to arrest the teenager killer who has been identified as Syed Ali Raza.
Police said Raza confessed to his crime saying that he killed Bajwa for his faith. The killer was a student of a seminary belonging to the TLP.
Over the last few decades, Pakistan’s minority communities have borne the brunt of mob brutality, bomb attacks, arsons, lynchings and other forms of violence, Dawn reported. The president of the Ahmadiyya community in Bahawalpur’s Hasilpur district was shot dead by unknown assailants last month. In March, police said they had arrested two suspected killers of a man belonging to the Ahmadiyya community.
Earlier last month, in a harrowing incident, seven labourers were shot dead in Pakistan's Balochistan province and one other injured by unknown gunmen while they were sleeping in their residential quarters in Surbandar, Gwadar, according to Dawn. The police said the labourers worked at a barber shop in Surbandar and belonged from the Punjab province.
Terrorist attacks in Balochistan
Pakistan saw at least 245 terror attacks, primarily in the violence-prone Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, during the first quarter of 2024 that resulted in 432 deaths and 370 injuries among civilians, security personnel and rebels, according to a think tank report. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan accounted for 86 per cent of the attacks and 92 per cent of the deaths.
In the first quarter of 2024, the Balochistan province of Pakistan recorded a massive 96 per cent surge in violence, with fatalities rising from 91 in the last quarter of 2023 to 178 in 2024. Sindh saw a nearly 47 per cent rise in violence, though the number of fatalities was very low. The regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan
