PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Gunmen killed a Christian priest and wounded another as the clerics drove home from church in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Sunday, police said.
Two attackers on a motorcycle opened fire on the car on the city’s ring-road, killing Pastor William Siraj instantly, officers added.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting in a city where scores of people died in a twin suicide bombing outside a church in 2013 — one of the deadliest attacks on Pakistan’s Christian minority.
Azad Marshall, the most senior bishop in the Church of Pakistan, condemned the attack and tweeted: “We demand justice and protection of Christians from the Government of Pakistan.”
Pakistan’s northwestern areas bordering Afghanistan have seen a rise in militant attacks on security forces in recent days, many of them claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group which associates itself with the Afghan Taliban.
TV footage showed emergency services removing Siraj from the car as they carried his body on a bed through the streets to a house. Mourners hugged each other and sobbed.
Pastor Siraj’s colleague — named by Bishop Azad as the Reverend Patrick Naeem — was out of danger and being treated for his injuries, a spokesman for the city’s Lady Reading hospital said.
Bishop Azad said both were clergy of the Diocese of Peshawar in the Church of Pakistan, which is a union of protestant churches including the Methodists and the Anglicans.
