Media worker Taimor Abbas was killed when unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle fired at the Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) van of Samaa television channel in Karachi.
This statement was originally published on pakistanpressfoundation.org on 13 February 2017.
One person was killed when unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle fired at the Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) van of Samaa television channel on February 12, 2017, in Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan. The person killed was 22-year-old Taimoor Abbas who was working as an assistant on the DSNG van.
The DSNG van of Samaa channel with four staffers had gone to cover an earlier grenade assault on a police vehicle. Farhan Mallik, Director of News for Samaa, told PPF that Abbas was hit on the neck and chest, while the engineer, cameraman and driver remained unhurt. Abbas was rushed to the nearby Abbassi Shaheed Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. Malik said the driver sped up and rushed from the scene, otherwise losses would have been higher. He added that attackers targeted the Samaa team to prevent them from carrying out their duty, but that the channel will be moving ahead with greater determination.
Police have registered the First Information Report (FIR) number 288/2017 against unknown suspects on February 13. The Inspector General of Police Sindh, A.D. Khawaja, constituted two committees on the instructions of Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah to investigate terrorist attacks on Samaa TV DSNG and a police armoured van in Karachi.
The banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement, TTP spokesperson Mohammad Khorasani said the media was not impartial and that they had given several warnings to them.
The attack has been widely condemned, including by the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE), the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists and the Karachi Union of Journalists.
