Shi'ite Islamic militant arrested in Pakistan

KARACHI, Mar 4 (Reuters) Pakistani police today arrested a Shi'ite Muslim militant in connection with the killing of several rival Sunni Muslim leaders, police said.

The suspect, Amad Raza Naqvi, is a member of the banned Sipah-e-Mohammad militant group and was arrested in the southern city of Karachi.

''He was a part of a four-member band involved in the assassinations of Nizamuddin Shamzai and Azam Tariq,'' said senior police officer Mazhar Mishawani, referring to radical Sunni clerics. The other three members of the gang are at large.

Shamzai was murdered in 2004 in Karachi while Azam Tariq, chief of the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba militant group, was shot dead in the capital, Islamabad, in 2003.

Thousands of people have been killed in tit-for-tat attack by Sunni and Shi'ite militants in Pakistan since the 1980s.

Shi'ites make up about 15 percent of the mostly Sunni Muslim country's population.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is striving to subdue Islamist militancy and has warned of the danger posed by sectarian hatred in the Muslim world.

REUTERS SHB BST1950