Shooting victim Zahra Shahid Hussain helped found Imran Khan’s PTI party

Karachi: Zahra Shahid Hussain was a senior woman politician in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi and was a key member and one of the founders of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

She was gunned down by motorcycle-riding assailants outside her residence late Saturday.

According to police reports, the three gunmen lay in wait for her and fled the scene after hitting her twice in the chin and head.

Hussain was vice-president in Sindh province of the PTI and her killing came as voters in constituencies across the city participated in a re-run of the May 11 elections following accusations of vote-rigging and ballot box stuffing, Dawn News reported. She played a key role in organising women participants in Khan’s fledgling political party.

Police said three motorcycle riders tried to snatch Hussain’s handbag and opened fire at the leader outside her residence in Defence Housing Authority Phase-IV area.

Hussain was a former university lecturer and, in November, led a PTI protest in November against a Nato air strike which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border. Khan’s party has campaigned on ending the drone war.

The arrival of Khan’s PTI party on Karachi’s political landscape is unsettling for the city’s biggest stakeholder, the MQM, whom the former cricketer blamed for hussain’s killing. The PTI’s popularity is rooted in young voters, women and the educated middle class — groups that had traditionally backed the MQM.

Yesterday, elsewhere in Paksitan, gunmen opened fire in several areas of Hyderabad city yesterday, including outside the house of PTI leader Usman Kennedy, Dawn News reported. His car was set on fire while several shops in the area were vandalised.

—Compiled from agencies