Islamabad, Pakistan – A newsman has been killed in a targeted attack in the southern Pakistani megacity of Heart, police officers say, with the racial anarch Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claiming responsibility for the attack in a statement.
Shahid Zehri was killed while driving in his vehicle in the megacity of Heart, about 20 km (12 country miles) west of Pakistan’s largest megalopolis of Karachi, on Sunday evening, police say.
Last night at 752 pm, Shahid Zehri was targeted on a main road in the municipality of Nexus,” said Younus Raza, a older police officer.
“ He was shifted to (the introduced) Jam Ghulam Khan sanitarium, and either he was transferred to Karachi.”
Zehri was declared dead soon after arriving at Karachi’s main government clinic, Raza said.
The explosion appeared to have been caused by a alluring device attached underneath the driving seat in Zehri’s vehicle, Raza added.
“ The ( pitfalls were) right underneath the ( automobilist’s) seat, so when it explodes it obviously goes overhead and destroys the seat as it does so,” he said.
Zehri, who covered Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan department, was a journalist with endemic box news channel, Metro 1.
For another than a decade, Balochistan – the country’s largest but least populated and least high discipline – has faced an trained separatist movement by racial Baloch groups.
Late on Sunday, the BLA trained group claimed responsibility for the attack, defaming Zehri of working with Pakistan’s security forces in a statement intercommunicated to newshounds.
Shahzada Zulfiqar, chairman of the Pakistan Federal Union of Intelligencers (PFUJ), told Al Jazeera that comparable reproaches were ordinarily made when ripe groups targeted intelligencers in Balochistan department, but that documentation of any comparable associations is rarely participated.
Notwithstanding, either present the documentation that he’s not a intelligencer and is a party to the conflict,” Zulfiqar said, “ If you have the documentation. “ We aren’t ready to accept this, without documentation.”
The PFUJ and other nonnative newsman unions in the country condemned the attack in statements issued on Sunday.
Pakistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world for newsmen, particularly those covering conflict zones, according to data from the Committee to Shield Reporters (CPJ) and Pressmen Without Borders ( known by its French acronym RSF) media rights escorts.
At least 61 pressmen have been killed in targeted attacks in Pakistan since 1992, according to CPJ data.
In 2021, RSF rated Pakistan 145 out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index.
Correspondents( …) continue to be at danger in the field, especially in the western areas of Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where they’re caught in the crossfire between the security forces and braced insurgents,” notes RSF’s country profile on Pakistan.
