Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday reaffirmed the government’s pledge to eradicate terrorism after seven Punjab-bound passengers were offloaded from a bus and shot dead in Barkhan district last night.
The premier’s remarks follow Tuesday night’s incident when armed men “offloaded seven passengers from a coach after checking their identity cards and killed them”, according to Barkhan Deputy Commissioner (DC) Waqar Khurshid Alam.
In a statement , PM Shehbaz asserted, “Those who harm innocent and defenceless people will have to pay a very heavy price.”
The prime minister reaffirmed the commitment to completely eliminate terrorism from the country, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.
Expressing grief over the killing of the bus passengers, he conveyed his sympathies to the bereaved families and prayed for the departed souls.
PM Shehbaz directed that the perpetrators be brought to justice at the earliest, the report added. “The sacrifices of innocent civilians will never go in vain.”
DC Alam had said, “All seven who were travelling in the coach belonged to Punjab, and were on their way to Lahore.”
After disembarking them from the coach, the gunmen opened fire, killing them on the spot, he said, adding that the attackers managed to escape.
The Barkhan DC also said security forces had cordoned off the area after the incident. The bodies of the seven slain men were later shifted to the district headquarters hospital.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.
Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Safaraz Bugti also vowed the government’s “concrete response” to terrorism and condemned the “brutal killing of seven innocent passengers”.
“The cowardly attack by enemies of peace is intolerable and a concrete response will be given,” CM Bugti vowed.
Noting that terrorists were “targeting innocent and defenceless people”, he said: “We will service justice to terrorists who have martyred Pakistanis.”
The incident comes days after 12 were killed in a blast targeting a bus carrying coal miners in Harnai.
Separately, gunmen shot dead a police officer guarding a polio vaccination team on Wednesday in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district, police said.
“Two motorcycle riders opened fire … as a result, the police officer died on the spot, but the polio team remained unharmed,” Niaz Muhammad, a police officer in Bajaur district, told AFP.
Bajaur district shares a 52-kilometre border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio is endemic and militants have for decades targeted vaccination teams and their security escorts.
Polio has resurged in Pakistan, with two cases reported so far this year, and at least 73 polio infections last year, compared to six in 2023.