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Published 22 May, 2018 01:27pm

Sabika Sheikh to be laid to rest in Karachi tomorrow

Sabika Sheikh, the 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student who was killed in Texas school shooting last week, will be laid to rest Wednesday morning, an uncle of the deceased girl said on Tuesday.

Sabika, a Karachi teenager, was studying at Santa Fe High School in Texas on a US State Department scholarship. She was among 10 students gunned down on Friday inside the school by another teenager with white supremacist tendencies.

While talking to the media in Karachi today, Jaleel Sheikh said Sabika's body will arrive from the United States at 4am since the Turkish Airlines flight carrying it was delayed due to bad weather. Her body was earlier scheduled to arrive at 9am today.

He said that her funeral prayers will be held at 9am at Gulshan-i-Iqbal's Hakeem Saeed Ground, following which she will be buried in the Azeempura graveyard in Shah Faisal Colony. He added that Hakeem Saeed Ground had been chosen because a large number of people wanted to attend her last rites.

Sabika's uncle said his family is in contact with Pakistani diplomats as well as local administration.

Her funeral prayers were also held in Houston on Sunday and were attended by the city's mayor, members of the Congress and a large number of citizens.

At the memorial, Sabika's host family in the United States, the Cogburns, had spoken fondly of her time with them in Texas, remembering her as a "daughter", a "most precious gift", great ambassador of Pakistan and a deeply loving person.

"We loved her, and we hate this horrific thing happened," Jason Cogburn, her host father, said at the service. "We are going to carry on the tradition of love she brought from Pakistan."

"She came here to represent Pakistan, and let me tell you, she represented it well. She will be very missed, and she will always be loved."

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