Iran mission official shot dead in Pakistan

Gunmen shot dead a Pakistani spokesman for the Iranian consulate at point-blank range Thursday as he set off for work in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.

Attackers targeted Abu al-Hasan Jaffry, director of public relations and protocol at the consulate in Peshawar, after he left home in his car, senior police official Nisar Marwat told AFP.

Bullet holes punctured his modest, Suzuki Cultus, sending shards of glass onto the road, television footage showed.

Police declined to speculate on a motive for the killing of Jaffry, which came almost exactly a year after an Iranian diplomat was abducted in the same city. The diplomat is still missing.

Security officials said they suspected those responsible were part of the same group behind both these incidents and the killing of a U.S. development worker.

"As he came out of the narrow street where his house is, an attacker on foot was waiting and opened fire and then ran away," Peshawar's police chief Liaqat Ali Khan told Reuters.

Hassan died on his way to the hospital."No one saw the attacker. We've just got shell casings from a pistol from the spot," he said.

A post-mortem examination was in progress at Peshawar's Combined Military Hospital, a police official said.

Relations between Iran and Pakistan are close, but tensions rose last month when Tehran blamed Pakistan-based militants for a suicide attack that killed 42 people, including 15 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.

Islamabad has strongly denied that the militant group Jundallah launched the Oct.18 attack from its territory.

Peshawar runs into Pakistan's tribal badlands on the Afghan border, which U.S. officials call the most dangerous place on earth because of sanctuaries for Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants allegedly plotting attacks on the West.

The northwestern metropolis of 2.5 million people has been hit by a wave of suicide bombings and gun attacks but sectarian violence is rare in the city.

As he came out of the narrow street where his house is, an attacker on foot was waiting and opened fire and then ran away

Peshawar\\\'s police chief Liaqat Ali Khan