Pictured: Sandals of Pakistani women's rights activist left laying in footwell of her car after she's gunned down in 'targeted assassination'

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Two gunmen have assassinated prominent Pakistani women's rights activist Sabeen Mahmud by pulling up next to her vehicle at a traffic light and spraying it with bullets.

Photographs taken of her vehicle show her sandals remained resting in the footwell of the driver's seat, while the exterior of the white vehicle was left stained with her blood.

While investigators declined to speculate on a motive for the killing, friends and colleagues immediately described her death as a targeted assassination in Pakistan - a country with a nascent democracy where the military and intelligence services still hold tremendous sway.

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Assassinated women's rights activist Sabeen Mahmud's sandals remain in the footwell of her car, where she was gunned down on Friday night

A Pakistani cameraman films her car hours after she was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle

Pakistani police officers examine the damaged car, who was killed as she returned to her home in Karachi

The gunmen shot both Mahmud and her mother, Mehnaz Mahmud, as they stopped at a traffic light Friday night in an upscale Karachi neighborhood, senior police officer Zafar Iqbal said.

Later, journalists saw their car at a nearby police station, the front driver's side window smashed out and the pair of sandals on the floorboard with broken glass all around them.

Blood stained the car's white body.

'Two men riding a motorcycle opened fire on the car,' Iqbal said, adding that Mehmud 'died on her way to the hospital. Her mother was also wounded.'

Alia Chughtai, a close friend of Mahmud, said that she was driving at the time of attack and her mother was sitting next to her.

She added that Mahmud's driver, who escaped unharmed, was sitting in the back seat at the time of the attack but she was unsure why the driver wasn't driving the car.

Mr Iqbal and other police officials declined to offer a motive for the slaying.

However, earlier that night Mahmud hosted an event at her organization called The Second Floor to discuss human rights in Baluchistan, an impoverished but resource-rich southwestern province bordering Iran.

Thousands of people have disappeared from the province in recent years amid a government crackdown on nationalists and insurgent groups there.

Activists blame the government for the disappearances, something authorities deny.

Qadeer Baluch, an activist who last year led a nearly 3,000-kilometer (1,900-mile) protest march across Pakistan to demand justice for the missing in Baluchistan, attended the event.

He hinted that the government could be involved in Mahmud's slaying.

People carry the casket Sabeen Mahmud, who was killed by two unknown gunmen on a motorcycle

'Everybody knows who killed her and why,' Baluch told Pakistan's The Nation newspaper, without elaborating.

'The programme organisers were already receiving threats. It is very difficult to talk about Baluchistan in Pakistan.'

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned Mahmud's killing and ordered an investigation into the attack.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad also condemned Mahmud's slaying and offered condolences to her loved ones.

Mahmud was 'a courageous voice of the Pakistani people and her death represents a great loss,' it said.

She was a well-known activist who also ran a small tech company, hosted poetry readings, computer workshops and other events at The Second Floor.

She continued to live in Karachi, Pakistan's southern port city, even while acknowledging the danger from insurgent groups and criminals operating there.

'Fear is just a line in your head,' Mahmud told Wired magazine in 2013. 'You can choose what side of that line you want to be on.' 

Pakistan's powerful army condemned the killing, pledging that the country's intelligence agencies would assist in the investigation. 

A woman mourns after attending the funeral prayers of women's rights activist Sabeen Mahmud