KARACHI Four people including a political activist and a one-year-old baby were shot dead Saturday in Pakistan's violence-plagued port city of Karachi, police said. Irfan Beg, 30, an activist of former Premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP), was killed in central Liaquatbad area after being kidnapped, they said. Police said they suspected a political motive behind the killing. A group of armed men barged into a house in central buffer zone and fired at the residents, killing baby Humera and injuring her mother, aunt and a cousin.

Police said the attackers could be robbers. Police found the bullet-riddled body of a young man in central Sharifabad area, while another man was killed elsewhere in the city. On Friday Farid Ahmed Sheikh, a director at Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) was killed in an ambush, in the main business center. He was the third KMC official shot dead this month.

Several provincial government officials have been killed since late August, marking a new trend in the prolonged violence here. At least 75 people have been killed since the city's Muttahida Qaumi Movement Party last month deserted the coalition ruling in southern Sindh Province. Most of the victims were supporters of the MQM and its splinter MQM-Haqiqi faction. The main MQM blames intelligence agencies and its rival faction for the killings.

Government officials and the MQM-Haqiqi deny the charge. A force of more than 30,000 police and paramilitary troops are deployed in Karachi where some 3,000 people have died in political, ethnic and sectarian violence over the past three years. (AFP)