Pro-Bhutto opposition leader killed in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, May 7 (Reuters) Gunmen shot dead a senior Pakistani opposition leader and a relative, police said today, in what could be a foretaste of violence in the run-up to a general election due around the end of the year.

Qamar Abbas, a provincial leader of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and a former provincial government minister, was shot late yesterday in the northwestern city of Peshawar while returning from a wedding.

''Abbas and his nephew were riding a motorcycle and as they reached a deserted place the assailants, who were probably chasing them in a car, opened fire and killed them both,'' said police officer Faraz Khan.

The family of the dead men suspected that members of a rival political family were behind the attack and had filed a complaint naming five members of the family, including two senior members of the Awami National Party, as suspects, Khan said.

Abbas was accused of involvement in the killing of a member of the rival family and two other people in an election clash in 1997 but he was never convicted.

Pakistani elections are invariably plagued by violence between local-level rivals and their activists. A general election is due late this year or early next.

REUTERS SG DS1242