Islamabad:
Gunmen shot and killed the Christian Pakistani government minister for religious minorities on Wednesday, the latest attack on a high-profile figure threatened by Muslim militants for urging reform of harsh blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.
The killing of Shahbaz Bhatti further undermines Pakistan's shaky image as a moderate Islamic state and could deepen the political turmoil in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied state whose economy subsists on international loans and where militants frequently stage suicide attacks.
In January, Punjab province Gov. Salman Taseer was killed by a bodyguard who said he was angry that the politician opposed the blasphemy laws. To the horror of Pakistan besieged liberals, many ordinary Pakistanis praised the assassin -- a sign of the spread of hardline Islamist thought in the country.
Bhatti, the sole Christian member of the federal Cabinet, was on his way to work in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, when unknown gunmen riddled his car with bullets, police officer Mohmmad Iqbal said. The minister arrived dead at Shifa Hospital, hospital spokesman Asmatullah Qureshi said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but pamphlets were found at the scene of the killing that were attributed to the Pakistani Taliban warning of the same fate for anyone opposing the blasphemy laws.
Pakistani Christians reeled from the loss of their most prominent advocate. Christians are the largest religious minority in the country, where roughly 5 per cent of 180 million people are not Muslim.
"We have been orphaned today!" wailed Rehman Masih, a Christian Pakistani resident of Islamabad. "Now who will fight for our rights? Who will raise a voice for us? Who will help us?"
Gulam Rahim was coming from a nearby market when he saw Bhatti's car drive out of his house. Three men standing nearby with guns suddenly began firing at the vehicle, a dark-coloured Toyota.
Two of the men opened the door and tried to pull Bhatti out, Rahim said, while a third man fired his Kalashnikov rifle repeatedly into the car. The three gunmen then sped away in a white Suzuki Mehran car, said Rahim who took shelter behind a tree.
Pakistani TV channels showed Bhatti's vehicle afterward, its windows shattered with bullet holes all over. Officials initially said Bhatti's driver was also wounded, but later said he was unharmed.
"This is concerted campaign to slaughter every liberal, progressive and humanist voice in Pakistan," said Farahnaz Ispahani, an aide to President Asif Ali Zardari. "The time has come for the federal government and provincial governments to speak out and to take a strong stand against these murderers to save the very essence of Pakistan."
Bhatti's friend Robinson Asghar said the slain minister had received threats following the death of the Punjab governor. Asghar said he had asked Bhatti to leave Pakistan for a while because of the threats, but that Bhatti had refused.
It was not immediately clear why Bhatti, a member of the ruling Pakistani People's Party, did not have bodyguards with him.
Senior Islamabad police official Wajid Durrani said they had provided police and paramilitary troops to Bhatti for his security, but that he was traveling without the guards at the time. He said Bhatti had visited his mother shortly before the attack, and that Bhatti had asked his official guards not to travel with him.
The blasphemy laws are a deeply sensitive subject in Pakistan, where most residents are Sunni Muslims and where austere versions of Islam -- more common in the Middle East than South Asia -- have been on the rise.
Human rights groups have long warned that the laws are vaguely worded and open to abuse because people often use them to settle rivalries or persecute religious minorities. But in a sign of how scared the largely secular-leaning ruling party is of Islamist street power, party leaders haven't supported Taseer and Bhatti's calls for reforming the laws. Instead, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others have repeatedly insisted they won't touch the statutes.
After Taseer's January 4 murder in Islamabad, his confessed killer, bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, was greeted with showers of rose petals from many lawyers who went to watch his initial court hearing.
"An urgent and meaningful policy shift on the appeasement of extremists that is supported by the military, the judiciary and the political class needs to replace the political cowardice and institutional myopia that encourages such continued appeasement despite its unrelenting bloody consequences," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
No one has been put to death for blasphemy in Pakistan because courts typically throw out cases or commute the sentences. Still, some who are released are later killed by extremists or have to go into hiding. Others accused of blasphemy spend long periods in prison while waiting for their cases to wind through the courts.
The laws came under renewed international scrutiny late last year when a 45-year-old Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
The family of Bibi -- a mother of five -- insists she was falsely accused over a personal dispute. There have been appeals from around the globe, including one from Pope Benedict XVI, to pardon her. But the government has said it is first waiting for a court ruling on her appeal.