Pakistan's Governor of Punjab province gunned down

AP – Pakistani police officers collect evidence at the scene where Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer was shot dead …

Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province and a member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, has been shot nine times and killed by one of his security guards in Islamabad in the most high-profile political assassination in Pakistan since the death of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110104/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_violence, http://tribune.com.pk/story/98988/salman-taseer-attacked-in-islamabad/, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110104/wl_nm/us_pakistan_governor_killing, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704723104576061371508098218.html, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/04/pakistan-attack-kills-punjab-governor, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12111831, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/world/asia/05pakistan.html?_r=1).

Taseer, a close ally of Pakistani president and Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, recently spoke out against Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws and is considered progressive. The suspected shooter, named in press reports as Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, has reportedly been taken into custody. Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik said Qadri confessed to shooting Taseer because of the governor's opposition to the blasphemy laws. The government of Pakistan has announced three days of national mourning and an investigation into the assassination.

The assassination comes amid continuing political turmoil in Pakistan: opposition leader Nawaz Sharif of the PML-N has given the PPP government of prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani three days to agree to key reforms or the PML-N will join with other opposition parties to move against the government. Sharif called for the government to reverse recent increases in fuel prices and cut government spending by 30 percent, among other demands. The PML-N said yesterday that it would not seek a no-confidence vote in Gilani because that would "damage the whole country".

Gilani spent yesterday meeting with political leaders from the PML-N and PML-Q in efforts to shore up the PPP-led coalition after the recent withdrawal of the MQM, which left the government without a majority in the National Assembly. Zardari, who is reportedly scheduled to visit the U.S. next week, expressed his support for Gilani yesterday, and a State Department spokesman said the coalition crisis "is about internal politics in Pakistan".

Yesterday in Karachi, a senior worker for the MQM and a member of the rival ANP, and three others, were shot in what appear to be the year's first targeted killings, sparking angry protests (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011%5C01%5C04%5Cstory_4-1-2011_pg7_2). In Orakzai agency in the northwest, a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan member chopped off the hand of a tribesman accused of theft (Dawn).