Federal Minister for Minority affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian, was killed in the I-8/3 area of Islamabad on Wednesday morning by three unidentified gunmen.

According to reports, the Tehrik-i-Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the minister.

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The minister had left his house moments ago when his car was intercepted by a white Suzuki Mehran. Assailants, dressed in shalwar kurtas, first took the minister’s driver out the car and then shot at Bhatti.

According to IG Islamabad, this was not a security lapse as escorts were provided to Bhatti, which he was not using. The minister had apparently instructed his security to wait at the office in I-8/4.

“The squad officer told me that the minister had directed him to wait for him at his office. He used to often visit his mother’s house without a squad,” Durrani said. “We are investigating the matter from different angles.”

Bhatti had been receiving death threats and he had requested the government for more security. He was provided with four guards by the interior ministry.

Local resident Naseem Ahmed said the firing continued for about 30 seconds.

“We came out of our home after hearing the gunfire, we saw the car, it was badly damaged. We saw the minister, he was rushed to hospital in a critical condition,” Ahmed told reporters.

Bhatti was dead on arrival at Islamabad’s Shifa hospital, doctor Azmatullah Qureshi confirmed. Police said his body was riddled with at least eight bullets.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani visited the hospital and offered condolences to Bhatti’s grieving relatives.

“Such acts will not deter the government’s resolve to fight terrorism and extremism,” he said, adding that the killers would not go unpunished.

Earlier, Bhatti had voiced his fears that he believed he would be “the highest target” following the assassination of Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer for speaking out against the blasphemy law.

Bhatti had said fatwas, or religious decrees, had been issued calling for him to be beheaded, by extremist clerics in the country who were allowed to publicly spread messages of violence with impunity.

After the Pakistani Taliban said that they killed the Christian minister, former MNA and chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, Sindh chapter Asadullah Bhutto said the assassination was an attempt by the CIA to divert the attention of masses from Raymond Davis.

“Accepting the responsibility of killing the minister soon after the incident by ‘Punjabi Taliban’, as reported by media, is an ample proof that the CIA is behind this crime because the US spy agency had been staging such ‘dramas’ of ‘Punjabi Taliban’ after committing the crimes of same nature earlier,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

The archbishop of Canterbury expressed “shock and sorrow” at the murder and the Vatican condemned it as an “unspeakable” act of violence.

Source: AFP