Gunmen shot dead a Pakistani spokesman for the Iranian consulate at point blank range Thursday as he set off for work in Peshawar, police said. Attackers targeted Abu Al-Hasan Jaffry, director of public relations and protocol at the consulate in Peshawar, after he left home in his car, senior police official Nisar Marwat told AFP. Bullet holes punctured his modest, white Suzuki Cultus, sending shards of glass onto the road, television footage showed. Jaffry died on the way to hospital, Marwat said. The motive for the killing was not immediately clear. Security officials said they suspected those responsible were part of the same group behind kidnappings last year in Peshawar of an Iranian diplomat and Afghanistan's ambassador-designate, and the killing of a US development worker. Jaffry, a father of one, was shot on a main road soon after leaving his home in the Gulberg neighbourhood of Peshawar, friends and witnesses said. "Suddenly the firing started and when I reached the main road, I saw Jaffry bleeding with wounds and the attackers, probably more than two, had fled," one man, who declined to give his name, told AFP. "Jaffry had been hit in the head and chest and his left arm was badly injured," he added. A post-mortem examination was in progress at Peshawar's Combined Military Hospital, a police official said.