PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov 12, 2009 (AFP) - Gunmen shot dead a Pakistani spokesman for the Iranian consulate at point blank range as he set off for work in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Thursday, police said.

Attackers targeted Abu Al-Hasan Jaffry, director of public relations and protocol at the consulate in Peshawar, shortly after he left home in his car, senior police official Nisar Marwat told AFP.

Bullet holes punctured his car, sending shards of glass on to the road, according to television footage from Peshawar, which has been hit by a wave of attacks.

The killing was condemned by Iran and the United States but the motive for the attack 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.

Relations between Iran and Pakistan are warm but tensions rose last month when Tehran blamed Pakistan-based militants for a suicide attack that killed 42 people, including 15 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.

Iran's foreign ministry condemned Jaffry's assassination.

"We strongly condemn this terrorist and inhuman action and insist that the murderers be identified," spokesman Ramin Mehman Parast was quoted as saying on the Iranian state television website.

"We also call for better protection of all diplomatic offices," he added. Jaffry, a father of one who was in his 50s, 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.

The US embassy in Islamabad condemned Thursday's assassination, which it said "represents a new tactic by extremists hoping to isolate Pakistan from its supporters in the international community.

Peshawar runs into Pakistan's tribal district on the Afghan border, which US officials call the most dangerous place on earth because of sanctuaries for Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants allegedly plotting attacks on the West.

The northwestern metropolis of 2.5 million people has been hit by a wave of suicide bombings and gun attacks but sectarian violence is rare in the city.

Shiites, who are a majority in Iran, account for about 20 percent of Pakistan's mostly Sunni Muslim population of 167 million. More than 4,000 people have died in flashes of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the 1980s.