Students take the body of Mufti Jameel Ahmad Khan out of a Karachi hospital. (AFP)

Karachi, Oct. 9 (Reuters): A leading pro-Taliban Sunni cleric and an associate were shot dead in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Saturday, police and hospital officials said.

Two unidentified gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on Mufti Jameel Ahmad Khan?s van near his house in a middle class neighbourhood of eastern Karachi, Kamran Fazal, a senior superintendent of police, said.

Khan sustained five to six bullet wounds to his chest and stomach and died in hospital, doctors said. Another cleric, who was an associate of Khan, was also killed, they said.

The killings follow two deadly attacks on religious gatherings in Pakistan this month in which more than 70 majority Sunni and minority Shias have died, fuelling fears of a flare-up in sectarian violence.

Khan was a close associate of Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, a leading pro-Taliban cleric who was shot dead by gunmen in Karachi in May and belonged to the radical Deobandi school of Islam. Witnesses said hundreds of angry Islamic students immediately began protests at the killings and stoned shops and passing vehicles in the eastern part of Karachi.

Earlier today, police said they had arrested more than 50 members of outlawed Islamic militant groups in central Pakistan as part of investigations into two deadly attacks on religious congregations this month.

The crackdown followed a car bomb attack on a crowd of radical Sunnis in Multan on Thursday that killed at least 42 people and a suicide bombing at a crowded Shia mosque in which 30 died in Sialkot.

Chinese kidnapped

Two Chinese engineers working at a hydro-electric project in Pakistan were kidnapped by tribesmen today, officials said. The men, who had been working on the Gomal Zam Dam project close to the South Waziristan tribal region, were taken along with two Pakistani security personnel.

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