MULTAN, Pakistan (AFP) – Four men shot dead their sister, her husband, infant son and two others for marrying a man of her choice, in the latest brutal “honour killing” in Pakistan, police said yesterday.

The 30-year-old woman’s brothers, accompanied by some family friends, barged into her home in Khanewal, near the central city of Multan, on Tuesday to avenge the “disgrace” caused by her marriage.

The incident came as President Pervez Musharraf signed into law a bill adopted by Pakistan’s parliament last autumn introducing the death penalty for such murders.

The dead woman, named as Munawar Mai, had married Mukhtar Ahmed in 2001 after refusing to tie the knot with a relative chosen by her parents, local police officer Jamil Ahmed told AFP.

A case of abduction lodged against Ahmed was dismissed by a local court which declared their marriage valid.

But her enraged siblings stormed into her house and gunned down Mai, Ahmed, their two-year-old son, her mother-in-law and her brother-in-law.

Funeral prayers for the slain family were attended by several thousand people in their home town yesterday.

“We have arrested five suspects in the case, however her brothers managed to run away after the killings,” the police officer said.

Under the new law, accomplices to honour killings face life sentences, which in Pakistan are a maximum of 25 years.

Officials say about 4,000 people, mostly women, have been killed in rural areas of Pakistan over the past four years in the name of protecting family honour.