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Two Pakistan charity workers shot dead

Unknown gunmen on Saturday shot dead two Pakistani charity workers involved in an education project in the northwestern city of Charsadda, 80 miles (130 kilometres) from Islamabad, police said.

Zakir Hussain, head of the education wing of the Al-Khidmat Foundation in Charsadda, was attacked with his driver as they were on the way to visit one of the schools being run by the charity.

“Two gunmen fired at them in Utmanzai town, seven kilometres (four miles) north of Charsadda, and escaped on a motorcycle after the attack,” senior police official Nisar Khan Marwat told AFP.

An official for the Al-Khidmat charity also confirmed the attack.

A representative for an alliance of non-governmental organisations in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province demanded the attackers be arrested.

“We strongly condemn the attack on Al-Khidmat Foundation vehicle and killing of its workers and demand arrest of the attackers,” Idrees Kamal, the coordinator of Pakhtunkhwa Civil Society Network (PCSN), said in a statement.

On Tuesday, seven charity workers including six women and a man working for a Pakistani health and education charity involved in vaccinations were shot dead on their way home from a community centre in the northwestern Swabi district.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Taliban insurgency for five years, as well as a separatist Baluch uprising in the southwest. It also suffers from routine attacks blamed on a series of hardline Islamist factions.

Islamabad says more than 35,000 people have been killed as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.