KARACHI -- Two unidentified gunmen Monday shot dead a doctor from Pakistan's Minority Shia Muslim Community in an apparent sectarian attack here, police said.

Ale Safdar Rizvi, a kidney specialist, was on his way to Jinnah Hospital when assailants ambushed his car in southern Karachi, police chief Tariq Jamil said.

"Two gunmen sprayed his car with bullets. He sustained multiple bullet wounds and died in the hospital," Jamil said, adding the incident appeared to be a sectarian killing.

A string of sectarian attacks has occurred in Pakistan over the past two weeks in violence attributed by police to extremists returning from Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taleban regime, AFP said.

Last Tuesday, 11 people were killed in an attack on a Shia mosque in the northern city of Rawalpindi.

Police have blamed two outlawed Sunni extremist groups, Sipah-i-Sahaba and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, for the mosque attack and rounded up around 50 people with links to the organizations.

Karachi has a history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence, which has left hundreds of people dead in the past two years.