LAHORE, Pakistan, Feb 22 (AFP) - Violence broke out in the Pakistani industrial city of Gujranwala Thursday after the murder of a prominent Shiite Muslim in a suspected sectarian killing, police said.
Hundreds of people including youths armed with bamboo sticks took to the streets and attacked shops, cars and buses, witnesses said.
Rampaging mobs also blocked traffic by burning tyres on the main highway, they said.
At least 30 vehicles and dozens of shops were damaged in stone-pelting by violent crowds, senior police officer Naveed Anwar told AFP by telephone.
Police said an unidentified gunman riding on the back of a motorcycle sprayed Shiite politicial activist Ghulam Shabbir with bullets from an assault rifle as he walked to a market in Gujranwala in central Punjab province.
"Shabbir was killed because he was a prominent Shiite leader. This murder is clearly sectarian," district police chief Pervez Lodhi said.
The Gujranwala Bar Association condemned the murder of Shabbir, who was also a senior lawyer. It said lawyers would observe a three-day strike and boycott courts from Friday.
The murder coincided with the killing of a policeman and his father in the southern port city of Karachi on Thursday, which a Shiite party official described as sectarian-motivated.
Officials said paramilitary rangers arrested two "terrorists" involved in the killings in eastern Karachi.
Punjab has seen a spate of similiar murders in recent weeks despite promises from the military government that it was going to get tough with violent religious extremists.
Gunmen shot dead four Shiite Muslims in sectarian ambushes in the province last weekend, prompting a senior police officer to warn of a "resurgence" of religious violence between the rival Shiite and Sunni sects.
Most of the Shiite victims have affiliations with the Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) Shiite party, while others have been linked to Iranian missions here.
Hundreds of people, most of them Shiites, have been murdered in religious violence in Pakistan in recent years but police rarely catch the killers.
The Shiite community frequently blames members of Lashar-e-Jhangvi, an extremist Sunni group.