QUETTA: Gunmen opened fire on a bus in the Mastung area of Balochistan, carrying passengers to Iran on Tuesday, killing at least 26 Shia pilgrims, police said.
In a brutal assault, gunmen ordered pilgrims off their bus, lined them up and killed them in a hail of gunfire in Mastung, a district south of Quetta.
“The attackers stopped the bus and forced the pilgrims to get off, lined them up and then opened fire,” local deputy commissioner Saeed Imrani told AFP.
“The death toll has risen to 26. At least six people were wounded, four of them are in a critical condition,” he added, after earlier saying 20 died.
Balochistan has increasingly become a flashpoint for sectarian violence between Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites.
“It is an emergency-like situation. We are taking the dead and injured to hospitals. Twenty-six pilgrims were killed and six wounded,” Shah Nawaz, another government official told a TV channel.
The bus driver, Khushal Khan, recounted harrowing details of the attack to reporters for two Pakistani TV channels who quickly reached the scene.
“There was no security on our bus. Eight to 10 attackers armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers stopped the bus and forced all the passengers to get off,” he recalled while speaking to the media.
“Forty-five passengers were travelling. Some of them managed to escape. I also managed to escape,” he said.
“The attackers then fled in their vehicle,” he said.
Mastung is Chief Minister Balochistan, Nawab Mohammed Aslam Raisani’s constituency.
According to Express 24/7 correspondent Muhammad Kazim, another car was also attacked by gunmen in Quetta, killing two men. The car was reportedly enroute to Mastung to rescue survivors of the attacked bus.
Earlier in June, a group of armed men opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims from Balochistan to Iran, killing two people and injuring nine others.
The attack occurred near the western bypass near Quetta.
The passenger coach, which was on its way from Quetta to Taftan, was carrying 50 passengers when it was attacked near the Akhtarabad area.
The assailants escaped after the attack. Police and other law-enforcement agencies took the bodies and the injured to the Bolan Medical College Hospital, sources at the hospital said.
Around 26 Shia pilgrims killed in Quetta
Filed in: Asia
