Family still unable to break news of father's death to children

Ajman: Nearly a week after an ex-Pakistan mayor was gunned down in Ajman, his relatives are still unable to break the news to his three children and paralytic father living in the UAE. Iftikhar Ahmad Khan, 48, was ambushed and shot five times in the head as he sat in his car around 9am on April 2.

"I don't have the heart to tell them," said Khan's grieving nephew Irfan Akhtar.

Khan's father suffered a paralytic stroke last year when a young member of his family was shot dead in Pakistan - a fallout of a long-running political feud that has claimed many lives on either side. "He is shattered already. I am not sure if he could take another blow," said Akhtar.

Khan had gone to meet some workers at a labour camp with his brother Zulfiqar as part of a morning routine. He was waiting for his brother in his silver colour Toyota Corolla when the killers struck. Zulfiqar grabbed the steering wheel of the bullet-riddled car and rushed his profusely bleeding brother to the hospital. But it was too late.

"We have no enmity with anyone in the UAE. I strongly suspect the hitmen were sent by our political rivals back home," Akhtar, 30, who works with etisalat, told XPRESS.

A former mayor of Haripur town in northwestern Pakistan, Khan was held in the 2008 slaying of a provincial minister, Akhtar Nawaz Khan, in the region. He relocated to the UAE with his family after getting bail from a court in Pakistan.

Perfect getaway

On Street 30 in Al Rashidiya, opposite the comfortable suburbs of Ajman's Rashidiya Towers are a row of dilapidated houses, occupied mostly by grocery and construction workers. One of them is House No 40. It's outside this crumbling structure, nestled between two unkempt half-grown palm trees where the ambush took place.

His assassins - two young men - could have picked another location. But here they blended in. Ever since Rashidiya Towers, comprising 11 buildings with 12 floors each, came up in the vicinity the place has become home to a bewildering mix of nationalities. "It's like a mini Jumeirah Beach Residence," said a resident.

However, unlike Dubai's JBR which lies on just one stretch, Al Rashidiya is a veritable maze of roads and side streets. For killers on the run, it provided the perfect getaway set-up.

"They split up and disappeared in the blink of an eye. I saw them running. There were two of them… they went in different directions. One of them was dressed in a maroon salwar kameez while the other guy wore an off-white T-shirt over a pair of jeans," recalled a man who dashed out of the nearby Al Hewar Foodstuff grocery store where he works when he heard the gunshots.

A laundry worker whose shop is located diagonally opposite the murder spot also claimed hearing the shots. "Who would have thought those were gunshots? I thought somebody was bursting firecrackers. It was only when I saw a commotion outside did I realise that something was wrong," he said.

Ajman Police declined to comment on the case saying it was under investigation, but sources said several workers who lived in House No 40 have been rounded up for questioning.

Khan's murder is the third assassination carried out in the UAE since 2009. Last year Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh was found dead in a hotel room in Dubai, and in 2009 Chechen warlord Sulim Yamadayev was shot in a parking lot at JBR.