JOIN USZubair Khan was standing outside his residence last night in old Hyderabad city when miscreants on motorcycles fired bursts at him as he hastily went back into the house, they said.
"The attackers escaped after the security guards of the minister retaliated at them," they added.
The incident drew sharp reactions from the MQM central coordination committee which called upon the government to immediately take notice of the incident and arrest the culprits.
"The government must take note of this serious incident where another minister has been targeted, the people behind this attempt must be arrested immediately," MQM chief Altaf Hussain said from London.
This is the second attempt on a sitting MQM provincial Assembly member as last year Raza Haider was shot dead outside a mosque in Nazimabad, leading to widescale violence in Karachi.
Haider was in Nazimabad on August 10 to attend the funeral of a relative when six unidentified gunmen opened fire at him. The violence that followed his death had killed over 50 people.
MQM is one of the main and largest coalition partners of the ruling Pakistan People's Party government but relations between the two have been tense in recent months and MQM ministers have resigned from the federal cabinet to protest against the hike in fuel prices and other government policies.
In another development, the son of a senior PPP leader, Fauzia Wahab, was abducted last night from the busy Karsaz Road in Karachi but was fortunate to escape after the authorities jammed his car driven by abductors with tracker systems.
"My son who is a barrister, was abducted for a while by unknown people but since the car had a tracker they escaped when it was jammed," Wahab said.