Senior police officer Zafar Iqbal says gunmen attacked Sabeen Mehmud on Friday night as she returned to her Karachi home with her mother, who was wounded in the assault.
In a statement Saturday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned Mehmud's killing and ordered an investigation.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The killing came hours after Mehmud organized a seminar about Baluchi nationalists, who often disappear in the country's impoverished but resource-rich southwestern Baluchistan province, which has been the site of a low-level insurgency for years. Pakistani rights activists blame security agencies for the disappearances, which they say number into the thousands.
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