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ADD US Drug Agency

man killed in

Karachi

The embassy statement different from a police account, which said that Toor, a 40-year-old retired army major, and his son had been in a car with a driver when a lone gunman on a motorcycle attacked them in the North Nazimabad area of District Central.

The gunman stopped near Toor's Suzuki Alto car at about 7.30 a.m. and fired six shots at close range, a police spokesman in Karachi said.

Three bullets hit Toor, who collapsed and died on the spot. His 16-year-old son was wounded and was taken to the Abbasi state hospital by the driver, who was unhurt.

Toor's son was conscious when taken to hospital, where he waved photographers away, saying: "I don't want this nonsense." He was placed in an intensive care unit after surgery.

A Pakistani security source said a police inquiry was under way into Toor's killing, which he said may have been the work of one of Karachi's powerful drug smuggling rings.

An official at the Pakistan Narcotics Control Board said Karachi was a main conduit for smuggling heroin and hashish from Afghanistan to the Gulf, Europe and the United States.

He said drug traffickers, who also sell their wares in the local market, were linked with much of the crime in Karachi, a teeming industrial city of about 12 million.-Reuter