Militant Party Cleric Shot Dead In Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan, Sept 12 (AFP) - A senior cleric belonging to a Pakistani extremist party was shot dead Sunday when a man opened fire at him as he stood on his front doorstep, police and party officials said.
A spokesman for the Jamaat-ud Dawa party, Yahya Mujahid, said Maulana Ibrahim Salafi was shot as he answered his door. Hhis assailant fled with an accomplice on a waiting motorbike, he said.
"We do not believe it was a sectarian murder," he told AFP.
Salafi, 55, was involved in preaching Islam and had "no political role" in the party, his spokesman said.
"We have registered a murder case and are investigating the motive behind the killing," police officer Mushtaq Ahmed said.
Jamaat-ud Dawa is led by Hafiz Saeed, the former chief of the anti-India Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT) militant group, which was banned by President Pervez Musharraf in a crackdown against extremist groups in 2002.
Militant groups have been waging an insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir since 1989. Kashmiri separatists claim 80,000 people have been killed in the fighting, while India puts the toll at around 40,000.
A Dawa party official, Habib Ullah, said the slain cleric was on the "hit list of terrorists" who wanted to kill religious leaders to create unrest in the country.