Pakistani Iranian consulate worker shot in Peshawar

By Faris Ali

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A gunman shot dead a Pakistani working at Iran's consulate in the city of Peshawar on Thursday, police said, in an attack likely to compound strains in relations between the Muslim neighbours.

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

"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.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi condemned the "heinous crime" and said the culprits would be brought to justice.

Ties between mostly Sunni Muslim Pakistan and majority Shi'ite Muslim Iran were strained last month by a suicide bomb attack in southeastern Iran which killed 42 people.

A Sunni Muslim rebel group, Jundollah (God's Soldiers), claimed responsibility for the attack in which 15 Iranian Revolutionary Guards, including six senior commanders, were killed along with 27 other people.