A female passenger is dead and two others were injured after a gunman opened fire on a Pakistan International Airways landing at Peshawar Airport in the fractious northwest part of the country. The airliner was on a flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and was on short final, about 300 feet off the ground, when it was hit by at least 10 bullets from an as-yet-unidentified automatic weapon. There were 178 passengers and an undetermined number of crew members on the flight. When the plane was about the land, we heard shots and suddenly there was chaos in the flight, an unidentified passenger interviewed by local television is quoted as saying.
The woman who was killed was returning from a visit with her husband and a religious pilgrimage, but most of those onboard were Pakistanis who work in Saudi Arabia. Police were unable to find the shooter but it’s likely he or she is a Taliban militant, part of a group trying to overthrow the government. The attack might be in retaliation for a government crackdown on militants in the tribal-controlled region near Peshawar.
