One man was killed in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Friday after a mob of radical Islamists attacked the Ahmadiyya community, authorities have said.
The Islamists previously surrounded the place of worship of the persecuted religious minority.
Ahmadiyya community spokesperson Amir Mahmood said a 47-year-old car workshop owner lost his life.
Local senior police official Muhammad Safdar confirmed the death, telling news agency AFP: “One member of the community was killed after the mob identified him as an Ahmadi. They attacked him with sticks and bricks.”
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What we know about the mob violence in Karachi?
Pakistani news outlet Dawn cited Deputy Inspector General of Police Syed Asad Raza as saying “[Around] 400 Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) workers gathered at the hall near the mobile market.”
The TLP is a hardline Islamist group that has previously been temporarily banned in Pakistan.
“The deceased, who was a known figure of the community, was passing through the area around 100-150 meters away from the place of worship when TLP members recognized him and began beating him, leading to his death,” Mehmood told Dawn.
Police eventually dispersed the group, allowing those trapped inside to come out. They said that dozens of people were then taken into protective custody.
A journalist for AFP reported seeing people being taken away in prison vans. It was not immediately clear what happened to the detainees.
There were also no reports of charges being brought against members of the mob.
Who are the Ahmaddiya and why are they being attacked?
The Ahmadiyya are considered heretics by the Pakistani state which has also made it illegal to call them Muslims and for them to use Islamic symbols. They are also often blocked from voting.
The group dates back to a reformist theologian in the late 1800s and they consider themselves a “Muslim reform group.” There are an estimated 12 million Ahmadiyya in the world, including over 40,000 in Germany.
Although the group has been persecuted for decades in Pakistan, the violence against has intensified in recent years.
Members of the mob on Friday said that they aimed to pressure local authorities to arrest members of the Ahmadiyya community.
“We requested that the place be sealed and that those conducting the Friday prayers be arrested, with criminal proceedings initiated against them,” Abdul Qadir Ashrafi told the AFP news agency.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) slammed the incident as a “failure of law and order” that was a “stark reminder of the continued complicity of the state in the systematic persecution of a beleaguered community.”
“The perpetrators of the attack in Saddar must be swiftly traced, arrested and prosecuted “without caving in to pressure from the far right to release those responsible,” the HRCP added.