Cleric gunned down

KARACHI, Pakistan – Thousands of Sunni Muslims rampaged through this volatile southern Pakistani city Sunday, ransacking property and stoning vehicles after unidentified gunmen assassinated an influential pro-Taliban cleric.

Enraged by the drive-by shooting of Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, rioters set fire to banks, shops, a police station and a KFC fast food restaurant, and traded gunfire with security forces, leaving more than a dozen people injured.

Tens of thousand of mourners later gathered for the evening funeral, where police fired warning shots above the crowd.

Shamzai, in his 70s, had met Osama bin Laden and was a strong supporter of Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime. The soft-spoken cleric was shot dead as he traveled in a pickup truck to his Sunni Muslim religious school in the east of the city.

Witnesses told police that as many as six gunmen riding in two cars and on a motorcycle opened fire on Shamzai’s vehicle, wounding one of his sons, a nephew, his driver and a police bodyguard.

No one claimed responsibility for the shooting, which Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali condemned as a “dastardly act of terrorism.”

In the riots, Sunni Muslim students, some shouting slogans against rival Shiite Muslims, took to the streets. The attack came three weeks after a suicide bomber killed 22 worshippers at a Shiite mosque in Karachi, and days after two car bombings near the U.S. Consul’s residence that killed one person and injured 40.