US shooting victim Sabika Sheikh laid to rest in Karachi

KARACHI: The 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student Sabika Sheikh, who was killed in a mass shooting at Texas high school, was laid to rest in Karachi on Wednesday.

He funeral prayers  were offered  at the Hakim Saeed Ground in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal locality where a large number of people including  Governor Sindh Mohammad Zubair,Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah  attended the funeral.

Earlier, a plane carrying slain Pakistani exchange student’s body arrived at Karachi Cargo Complex at 03:30am, where family and officials from Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) received the body of teenager. A guard of honour was given to the dead on the premises of the airport by Airport Security Force.

Consul General United States to Karachi, family members, friends, relatives were present at the airport to receive the body of Karachi teenager which was brought by an international flight TK 708.

Sabika, a Karachi teenager, was among 10 students gunned down on Friday inside school in US city of Houston by classmate, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, armed with a shotgun and a revolver.

She was studying at Santa Fe High School in Texas under an exchange program facilitated by the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program.

On Sunday, hundreds of people attended the funeral prayers of a Pakistani slain student in Houston.

Mayor of Houston, Pakistani diplomats, local members of the United States Congress, other US officials and a large number of students attended the somber ceremony took place at an Islamic center in the Texas town of Stafford.

Sabika was the eldest of four siblings, had left Pakistan last August and was expected to return home in a few weeks for Eidul Fitr.