by Our Foreign Desk

PAKISTAN was left in mourning yesterday following the brutal murder of prominent rights activist Sabeen Mahmud.

Gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated Ms Mahmud on Friday night. Just hours earlier, Mshe had hosted an event at her Second Floor organisation (T2F) to discuss human rights in Baluchistan.

Police investigators declined to speculate on a motive for the killing, but friends and colleagues immediately described her death as an assassination.

The gunmen shot both Ms Mahmud and her mother, Mehnaz, as they stopped at a traffic light in Karachi.

Two men riding a motorcycle opened fire on the car, police said. Ms Mahmud died on her way to the hospital and her mother was wounded.

Qadeer Baluch, an activist who led a 1,900-mile protest march across Pakistan to demand justice for the missing in Baluchistan last year, had attended the event on Friday night.

Mr Baluch hinted that the government could be involved in Ms Mahmud’s murder.

“Everybody knows who killed her and why,” he told The Nation newspaper, without elaborating.

But Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif publicly condemned the killing and ordered an investigation into the attack.

Ms Mahmud, a well-known activist who also ran a small tech company, hosted poetry readings, computer workshops and other events at the T2F cafe.

Pakistan’s army also condemned the killing, pledging that the country’s intelligence agencies would assist the investigation and “apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

“Our heart goes out to the bereaved family at this sad moment,” said army spokesman Major General Asim Salim Bajwa.