Daily Times

QUETTA: Gunmen riding a motorcycle killed two members of the Shiite community in an apparent sectarian attack on the outskirts of the Blochistan capital on Monday, police said.

The killing took place in the suburbs of Quetta, the provincial capital of the southwestern province of Balohistan, while the victims were travelling in a rickshaw.

“Gunmen on a motorcycle stopped the rickshaw and then opened fire on them and fled the scene,” said Abdullah Jan Afridi, a senior police officer in Quetta.

Afridi said the pair, from the Hazara ethnic group, were labourers in a coalmine. The rickshaw driver was unhurt in the attack in the Saryab Road area.

“We are investigating but apparently it is a sectarian attack,” Afridi said.

Noor Baloch, a police surgeon at Quetta Civil Hospital, said that both victims were shot in the head.

There was no claim of responsibility.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Khan Zehri ordered police to arrest the killers as soon as possible.

Balohistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has oil and gas resources but is afflicted by militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency. Sectarian violence has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade.

Earlier in July, two powerful explosions ripped through crowds of minority Hazaras in Kabul who had gathered to protest over a power line, killing at least 80 people and leaving 231 wounded, Afghan officials said.