Shia educationist killed in Karachi

On Friday night, the gunmen shot dead Professor Syed Azfar Rizvi, a renowned educationist and chief patron of the Pakistan Association of Press photographers, and his driver in the Karimabad neighborhood, the Pakistani television network Dawn News reported. The Pakistan Association of Press photographers, the Private Schools Association, the Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement strongly condemned the killing. Human rights groups have criticized the Pakistani government for its failure to stem the rising tide of violence against the country’s Shia Muslims. According to Human Rights Watch, about 400 Shia Muslims were killed in 2012 in Pakistan. The New York-based group said Islamabad's failure to capture or prosecute terrorists suggested it was "indifferent" to the killings. On February 16, a bomb attack targeting Shia Muslims in the main bazaar of the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta killed at least 90 people, including women and children, and injured 200 others. According to the police, most of the victims were Hazara Shias. On January 10, a twin bomb attack at a crowded billiard hall killed more than 90 people, mostly Shia Muslims, in Quetta, which is the capital of Balochistan province. The anti-Shia terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for the two bombings in Quetta. The group was founded in 1996 by Riaz Basra after he broke away from Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan over differences with his superiors. On March 1, former Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the LeJ has been involved in 80 percent of terrorist incidents in the country.