Gunmen yesterday shot dead four people in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan, officials said, in what police suspect was a sectarian attack.
Recent violence in Baluchistan has fuelled concern about security for projects in the $57-bn China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan’s southern deep-water port of Gwadar.
Provincial Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti said three men and a woman from the Hazara community were travelling to the southern port city of Karachi when armed men on two motorcycles attacked their car on a highway close to Quetta, the provincial capital.
“They were targeted because of their faith,” added Ghazanfar Ali, police chief in the town of Mastung, about 50km south of Quetta.
No group has so far claimed responsibility.
If claimed by militants, the latest killing would be fourth such attack in recent weeks in volatile Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
Factions of the Islamist Pakistani Taliban group and the Islamic State have claimed two of the four attacks, including two in which six police officers were killed.
Last week Pakistani army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa visited the resource-rich province, long plagued by separatist insurgencies, and said the militants, frustrated by defeats, were attacking soft targets and police.
Early in June, the Pakistani army said it dismantled a network of Islamic State militants and their affiliates who were trying to establish bases in rough terrain near Mastung.




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