Police in Pakistan say gunmen have killed a prominent women’s rights activist in the hours after she held a forum about the country’s restive Baluchistan region, The Guardian reported.

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 on Saturday, the Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, condemned Mehmud’s killing and ordered an investigation.

The killing came hours after Mehmud organised a seminar about Baluchi nationalists, who often disappear in the country’s impoverished but resource-rich south-western 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.