Home Latest News Four Hazara Shot Dead in Balochistan

Four Hazara Shot Dead in Balochistan

by AFP

File Photo. Asif Hassan—AFP

Police say family had no enemies and the attackers were religiously motivated

Gunmen ambushed a car and killed four family members from the Shia Hazara minority in an apparent sectarian attack in Balochistan on Wednesday, police said.

The men sprayed bullets at the vehicle of the family traveling to Karachi as they passed through Choto, a town some 40 kilometers south of provincial capital Quetta. “Four people of a family, including a woman, were killed and another man wounded when gunmen fired with automatic weapons on their car as it slowed down on a speed bump,” local police station chief Abdul Qudoos told AFP. “It is a sectarian killing as the family had no enemy,” Qudoos said.

District police chief Ghazanfar Ali Shah confirmed the details and said police suspect the attack was pre-planned, with informants in Quetta informing the attackers about the family’s movements.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Taliban militants have attacked Shia Hazaras in the past.

Sectarian violence—in particular by Sunni hardliners against Shias who make up roughly 20 percent of Pakistan’s 200 million people—has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade. Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has oil and gas resources but is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims and a separatist insurgency.

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