A young Pashtun actress from Pakistan’s volatile Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province has been shot dead by unknown gunmen, prompting police to launch a search for the killers.
The 22-year-old Musarrat Shaheen was with her mother on August 19 in the province’s central district of Nowshera, about 35 kilometers east of Peshawar, when gunmen on motorcycles pulled up beside them and began shooting.
Police say Shaheen died from multiple gunshots wounds and that her mother also was injured in the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Shaheen appeared as an actress in some Pakistani television programs and had starred regularly in locally produced serial dramas that are distributed on DVDs.
She was not related to the 57-year-old Mussarat Shaheen, a film actress and singer from the province’s Dera Ismail Khan district who became famous in the 1970s for her provocative dancing and, later, became a politician who challenged Islamic fundamentalists.