‘When the blood starts’: Spike in Ahmadi persecution in Pakistan

Attacks and blasphemy cases against minority sect spike, driven by rise of far-right group and a religious campaigner.

When the first bullet whizzed past Sheikh Nasir Ahmad’s ear, he brushed at it, thinking it was a mosquito, out on an unseasonably cool August night in the central Pakistani town of Lalamusa. Before he was able to react, however, two gunmen on a motorcycle pulled up alongside him and shot him four times, hitting his right leg, lower back and the right arm he used to try and shield himself from the hail of bullets. “You don’t feel anything at that time [when you are shot],” Ahmad told Al Jazeera. “[The bullet] is hot as it leaves the barrel, so it’s when the blood starts that you realise that something has hit you.”