Pakistani mourners gather around an ambulance carrying the coffin of Sufi musician Amjad Sabri during his funeral in Karachi. (Photo: AFP)
Pakistani mourners gather around an ambulance carrying the coffin of Sufi musician Amjad Sabri during his funeral in Karachi. (Photo: AFP)
Pakistani sufi singer Amjad Sabri, who was shot dead on Wednesday by unknown assailants, was laid to rest on Thursday at the Paposh Nagar graveyard in Karachi. He was buried next to his father Farid Sabri, who was also a major qawwali singer, and a leading member of the Sabri brothers.
Sabri, aged around 45, was travelling by car from his home to a television studio to attend Ramzan transmission, when a motorcycle pulled up alongside the vehicle and the attackers opened fire.
He was hit by five bullets and was declared dead at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital while a companion, named as a relative was in critical condition, a hospital source said.
Thousands of mourners crowded the funeral procession of a beloved Pakistani singer on Thursday, a day after he was gunned down in the port city of Karachi in an attack claimed by a faction of the Pakistani Taliban. People thronged the ambulance carrying Sabri's body to the funeral, blocking its progress.
Sabri's death was the latest in a high-profile series of attacks in Karachi, a megacity of 20 million plagued by political, ethnic and sectarian violence.
Karachi's murder rate has fallen sharply since 2013 after a crackdown by paramilitary Rangers, but new fears were stoked on Monday after the kidnapping of the son of Sindh high court Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah.
Two days later, gunmen on a motorcycle shot at the windscreen of Sabri's moving car in the congested Liaquatabad area of the southern city, and a relative traveling with him was wounded.
A spokesman for a branch of the Pakistani Taliban, Qari Saifullah Saif, claimed the killing late on Wednesday, saying it was in retaliation for a song that the hard-line group considers blasphemous.
In 2014, Sabri was caught up in a blasphemy case involving a Sufi song he had sung on a morning television show that mentioned religious figures in a way some deemed offensive.
Violence is common in Karachi despite a sharp decline in murders since the Pakistani military launched a crackdown two years ago against suspected militants and violent criminals.
In May, gunmen shot dead prominent Pakistani rights activist Khurram Zaki, known for his outspoken stance against the Taliban and other radical Islamist groups, in the central part of the city. In April last year, prominent activist Sabeen Mahmud was shot and killed while traveling in her car.
