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18 taken off buses, shot dead in sectarian attack

Police said the attackers flagged down buses, climbed on board asking passengers whether they were Shia or Sunni, then dragged out the Shias and shot them.

Outlawed terrorist group Jundallah later claimed responsibility for the attack on Karakoram Highway in the Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Jundallah’s commander Ahmed Marwat, who contacted mediapersons soon after the attack, claimed responsibility for the assault.

Seven armed men stopped two buses and a coaster. They were reported to be in military uniform. They asked the passengers to get off the bus and shot them after checking their identity cards.

The buses were travelling from Rawalpindi to Gilgit-Baltistan.

Most of the victims were devotees who were going back to their native areas after visiting holy shrines in Iran.

Another eight people were wounded in the attack, including two women and three children.

A source in the district administration in Dassu said that residents of Tangir’s Darkai valley, Commander Abdul Qayyum, Saddar Shariat and Burhan Shariat, sons of Gul Shahzada; Abdul Karim and Abdul Qadeem, sons of Abdul Ghafoor are suspected to be involved in the massacre.

Drivers Mohammed Younus of Nagar valley, Najibullah and Suhail Ahmed are among the deceased.

“All the people on board were Shia, and at the moment it looks like they were targeted by armed men from the local Sunni community,” a senior police official had earlier told Reuters.

“Armed men hiding on both sides of the road attacked the bus,” local police chief Mohammed Ilyas said.

Human rights groups have heavily criticised the Pakistani government for failing to crack down on sectarian violence that has killed thousands.

Local lawmaker Abdul Sattar Khan linked the ambush to the murder of two Sunnis a few days ago in Gilgit-Baltistan.

“The people of the area had vowed they would take revenge,” Khan said.

Some of Tuesday’s victims were from Gilgit-Baltistan, where the government ordered offices and schools to close as a safety precaution, and advised residents to stay indoors, local administration chief Tariq Arqam said.

Residents said Gilgit was tense and roads deserted. Shops in most areas were closed and traffic very thin, they added.

Provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain blamed the attack on militants.

“The people behind this attack are terrorists. They wanted to trigger sectarian violence in the country. We don’t want to go into the details because we don’t want them to succeed in their nefarious designs,” he said.

“We will give cash compensation to the families of the victims. The bodies of the dead have been sent to Gilgit-Baltistan for burial,” he added.

Authorities had earlier insisted militants were not active in the area, although Kohistan borders Swat, where Pakistan in 2009 managed to put down a two-year Taleban insurgency.

news@khaleejtimes.com

(With inputs from AFP)