PESHAWAR: Gunmen today shot dead a prison official and his brother in northwestern Pakistan, a week after a Taliban attack on an air force base which killed 29 people, police said.

Zahir Shah, the deputy superintendent of Peshawar prison, where hundreds of militants have been locked up, was shot at home at Hari Chand village, some 60 kilometres northeast of Peshawar, when he was meeting friends and relatives as part of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic festival of sacrifice.

Local residents said that four gunmen came on motorcycles and two went inside the premises posing as visitors to exchange Eid greetings with Shah and when they were sitting in a compound adjacent to his house, they opened fire on him.

Shah’s brother who was nearby and rushed to the scene with a gun was shot dead by two assailants standing outside, they said.

“Unknown gunmen shot dead Zahir Shah and his brother and fled on motorcycles,” local police station chief Hassan Khan told AFP.

District police chief Shafi Ullah confirmed the incident.

Nobody immediately claimed responsibility but Taliban militants have targeted police, politicians and government officials in the past.

Last Friday up to 14 Taliban militants entered an air force base outside Peshawar and killed 29 people, in the deadliest attack in Pakistan since December when Taliban killed 154 people, most of them children, at an army-run school in Peshawar.

The tribal badlands that lie just a short drive from Peshawar have been the scene of a major military offensive against Taliban and other militants over the past year.