KARACHI-
Two prisoners on death row convicted of murder were executed early morning on Tuesday at Karachi Central Jail, private media reported.
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) awarded death penalty to Attaullah alias Qasim and Muhammad Azam alias Sharif, members of the banned outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on July 6, 2004.
The two terrorists killed Dr. Muhammed Muhammed Raza Pirani on June 26, 2001 in Soldier Bazaar, Karachi, on sectarian grounds.
“They were hanged at 6:30 this morning and their bodies have been handed to their relatives,” a prison official tolda foreign news agency on condition of anonymity.
Strict security arrangements were made ahead of the executions. The road leading to the detention facility was also blocked as part of the security arrangements.
Shortly after the hangings, unknown attackers detonated a low-powered bomb near two schools in Karachi and left a note at the scene warning of more violence if the hanging of militants did not stop.
Pakistan has suffered a rising tide of sectarian violence in recent years, most of it perpetrated by hardline Sunni Muslim groups such as LeJ against minority Shiites, who make up around 20 percent of the population.
The latest sectarian outrage was on Friday, when a suicide bomber killed 61 people at a Shiite mosque in the southern Pakistani district of Shikarpur.
It was the deadliest attack targeting Shiites in Pakistan since February 2013, when 89 were killed in a market bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta.
Anti-Shiite attacks have been increasing in recent years in Karachi, Quetta, the northwestern area of Parachinar and the far northeastern town of Gilgit.
Around 1,000 Shiites have been killed in the past two years in Pakistan, with many of the attacks claimed by LeJ.
The country has stepped up its fight against militants since the Taliban school massacre in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December.
Heavily armed gunmen went from room to room at the army-run school gunning down 150 people, most of them children, in an attack that horrified the world.
In the aftermath the government ended a six-year moratorium on executions, restoring them for terror-related cases, and pledged to crack down on all militant groups.
Since then, at least 22 people; including today’s, have been hanged till death, with plans to execute up to 500.
The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty, which ran from 2008 until December 2014.
Rights campaigners say Pakistan overuses its anti-terror laws and courts to prosecute ordinary crimes.
There are also concerns that death row convicts from cases not related to terrorism could be executed.