A Chinese woman was shot dead with a male companion on Tuesday in the Peshawar, police said. They were killed by gunmen on motorbikes while walking in the Kohati bazaar in the historic centre of city, police said. The motive of the shooting and why the Chinese woman was in Peshawar was not immediately clear.
"Those who were killed are one man carrying a Pakistani ID card and one woman carrying a Chinese passport," police official Tahir Ayub told AFP. They were walking in the Kohati bazaar when gunmen on motorbikes shot them and fled, he said. The woman was aged about 40 and the Pakistani man was named as Suleiman Shams, 22.
Police found a Chinese passport with a Pakistani tourist visa inside, a laptop, digital camera and biscuits in the woman's bag, Ayub said. "It seems that militants killed them to make big news because the woman was a foreigner, otherwise we see no other reason immediately," he said.
Shamsul Arifeen, the father of the Pakistani man, said his son was on vacation from studying English literature at the prestigious Government College University in Lahore, and he had told him he was working as a translator. "My son told me that he knew a Chinese and wanted to work for her as a translator while she was in Peshawar. I told him not to get involved in this thing as the environment was hostile, but he insisted," Arifeen told AFP.