Suspected pro-Taleban militants shot and killed four Shiite Muslims in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday in what appeared to be the second deadly sectarian attack in two days. In Tuesday's attack, gunmen opened fire from a car at a group of men in the main market of the town of Hangu. The men were from the same family and were killed on the spot. “It appears to be a sectarian attack,” said senior Hangu police official Quresh Khan. The attack came a day after four Shiite Muslims were killed in a bomb attack on a mosque in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, where four Shiites and a policemen were killed in a drive-by shooting late last month. Also on Tuesday, police in Hangu found the body of a Shi'ite Muslim taxi driver who was kidnapped last week. A Shiite political leader said pro-Taliban militants based in tribal regions on the Afghan border, who are Sunnis, were likely behind the violence. “It's shocking ... It could be the work of militants fighting in tribal areas who may want to open a new front or foreign hands who want uncertainty in Pakistan,” said Abdul Jalil Naqvi, a leader of a Shiite party, the Islami Tehrik.
