LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a religious leader and two other members of the Shiite Muslim sect in two Pakistani cities on Thursday in what seemed to be the latest in a wave of sectarian violence, police said.
They said Shia leader Ghulam Shabbir Chohan died instantly after two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle sprayed bullets at him as he walked to a market in Gujranwala, in the central province of Punjab, north of the provincial capital Lahore.
Chohan was a former president of the Gujranwala branch of the Shiite Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) party.
In the port of Karachi, a Shiite policeman and his father, a retired police officer, were shot dead by two masked gunmen who were also riding a motorcycle, police there said.
They said the victims were attacked in Al-Falah area of northern Karachi.
Police said they had arrested two suspects belonging to a militant group from the majority Sunni Muslim sect.
More than a dozen Sunni and Shiite Muslims have been killed in tit-for-tat shootings in the past two months.
TJP chief Allama Sajid Naqvi, in a statement, blamed the military government for the violence.
``Now the situation has gone out of control and if this killing continues, then no one will be safe in the country,'' he said.
Hundreds of people have been killed in recent years in clashes between militants from Sunni and Shiite sects, which disagree over the interpretation of some of their Islamic beliefs.