The TOI correspondent from Islamabad: At least seven passengers belonging to Pakistan’s Punjab province were shot dead late on Tuesday night in Barkhan district, in volatile southwestern Balochistan province.
The incident occurred on a Balochistan-Punjab highway running through the Koh-e-Sulaiman mountain range. With 45 passengers on board, the bus was en route to Faisalabad from Quetta, Balochistan’s capital.
A senior government official said the attackers burst the tyres of the bus on a highway close to the provincial border with Punjab. “Armed men stopped a Punjab-bound bus, with 45 people on board, on the Balochistan-Punjab highway and off-boarded seven Punjabi passengers after checking identification cards of those on board the bus,” Khadim Hussain, Barkhan’s assistant commissioner, said. “The commuters were lined up and shot dead,” Hussain said, adding the attack was carried out within 10 minutes and the attackers escaped into the Koh-e-Sulaiman mountains.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but ethnic Baloch separatists, who have carried out similar attacks in the past, are the most likely suspects. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is the most active organisation in the region and it usually targets security forces as well as Pakistanis from other provinces.
At least 10 mine workers from northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were killed in a roadside blast in Balochistan’s Harnai district. Last year, at least 39 people were killed after BLA militants forcibly removed ethnic Punjabi commuters from buses in the volatile province. The BLA also targets Chinese interests in the restive province, claiming that outsiders are exploiting resource-rich Balochistan while leaving the natives behind.