KARACHI, March 27: Suspected insurgents shot and killed six people from Punjab after offloading them from a passenger bus in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, officials said on Thursday.
While five passengers died on the spot, one succumbed to injuries later. The attack occurred in the Gwadar district of the province when armed men stopped a Karachi-bound passenger bus from Gwadar near the Kalmat area on the Ormara highway late on Wednesday, said Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Hafeez Baloch.
The gunmen offloaded some passengers and shot six people.
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Baloch said that five of the passengers were killed instantly while one survivor passed away later in hospital Thursday morning, raising the death toll to six.
“Armed men killed six passengers after checking their ID cards and took away three others,” he said, adding that all victims belonged to the country’s Punjab province.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but in the past, ethnic Baloch terrorist groups carried out such targeted attacks against the people of Punjab.
The militants also stopped three long-body trailers carrying urea from Gwadar port by setting up roadblocks and setting them on fire.
Security forces moved towards the area where militants had blocked highways, with operations to clear the roads underway.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack on the passenger bus and directed relevant authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible.
“The terrorists are the enemies of the country’s development and prosperity of Balochistan. They cannot see progress in Balochistan,” the Dawn newspaper quoted President Asif Ali Zardari as saying.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti took to X to condemn the incident and said, “Offloading innocent passengers from a bus and murdering them based on their identity is a heinous and cowardly act.”
He pledged that the “war against hardcore terrorists would continue and they would be brought to justice by all means”, according to the report.
Insurgents have stepped up their attacks on security forces and civilians in recent months and it is not the first time that militants have stopped passenger buses and offloaded people from Punjab province and killed or kidnapped them.
In a separate incident in the Sohbat area of the Naseerabad division in the province, armed men attacked a residence and killed seven people of the same family including a woman and three children.
Police said the brutal killings were the result of a land dispute between two groups.
Wednesday’s attack on the bus comes amid a tense situation in the province as earlier this month, terrorists belonging to the banned separatist outfit Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) hijacked the Jaffar Express carrying 440 passengers. The hijacking resulted in the killing of 26 hostages, including 18 security personnel.
The Army eliminated all 33 terrorists the next day and rescued 354 hostages.
Since then, multiple attacks have taken place across Balochistan.
Earlier this week, unidentified armed men killed four policemen and four labourers in two separate incidents.
On March 17, five people including four children were injured in a grenade attack on the residence of a Station House Officer (SHO) in the province.
A day earlier, five people, including three Frontier Corps (FC) personnel, were killed and 30 injured after a paramilitary convoy was attacked by suspected Baloch militants on a highway in Noshki district.
Bordering Iran and Afghanistan, Balochistan is home to a long-running violent insurgency.
Baloch insurgent groups frequently carry out attacks targeting security personnel, government projects and the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects in this oil and mineral-rich province. (PTI)
