AFP/Quetta
Gunmen separately killed four Shia Muslims and two local UN employees yesterday in Baluchistan, a Pakistani province plagued by Taliban violence and a separatist insurgency, police said. There were angry demonstrations after the killings of the Shias, in what police described as the latest sectarian attack in the volatile southwest province. The gunmen, who were on a motorbike, fired at a van carrying members of the minority Muslim community in the Speeni Road neighbourhood of Quetta city, the capital of Baluchistan, police official Jamil Kakar said. “Four people including a woman were killed and seven others were wounded,” Kakar said, adding that it appeared to be a sectarian attack. Afterwards, a policeman was shot dead by Shia protesters in the Hazara Town neighbourhood of Quetta, where police tried to break up a road block erected by a mob, local police station chief Ameer Mohamed Dasti said. “Some protesters fired in the air in anger and one of the bullets wounded a policeman, who was taken to hospital but died,” Dasti said. Dozens of other Shias demonstrated in Quetta’s main Meezan Chowk square and outside the provincial police chief’s office, and torched a motorcycle at a local hospital to protest against the killings, witnesses said.