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| Relatives mourn the killing of Pakistani policemen after an attack by gunmen in Quetta yesterday |
Gunmen killed four policemen in a drive-by shooting on the outskirts of Pakistan’s troubled southwestern city of Quetta yesterday, police said.
The shooting comes two days after 15 people were killed by a bomb explosion outside the gates of the Sunni Muslim seminary in the city.
“Unidentified gunmen shot dead four policemen, who were on a routine patrol in the Saryab road area,” local police official Abdul Rahim said.
“We picked up the bodies from the site and shifted them to hospital.”
The number of attackers was not known, he said.
Another local senior police official, Mohamed Sikandar Tareen, confirmed the incident and casualties.
Police and security forces are frequently attacked in the insurgency-plagued Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital.
There was no claim of responsibility for the latest incident, but the oil and gas rich Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, suffers from Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims and a separatist insurgency.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed since Baluch rebels rose up in 2004 against the federal Pakistani government, demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the resources in the region.