Gunmen in Pakistan kill four Shi’ites in suspected sectarian attack

QUETTA (Reuters) – Gunmen on Wednesday shot dead four members of the Shi’ite minority in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan in what police suspect was a sectarian attack.

Recent violence in Baluchistan has fueled concern about security for projects in the $57 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transportation and energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan’s southern deepwater port of Gwadar.

Provincial Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti said three men and a woman from the Hazara community were traveling 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.

“The Shi’ites were targeted because of their faith,” said Ghazanfar Ali, police chief in the town of Mastung, about 50 km. south of Quetta.

No group has claimed responsibility.

If claimed by Islamist terrorists, 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 of Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa visited the resource-rich province, long plagued by separatist insurgencies, and said the jihadists, frustrated by defeats, were attacking soft targets and police.

Early in June, the Pakistani Army said it dismantled a network of Islamic State fighters and their affiliates who were trying to establish bases in rough terrain near Mastung.

Islamic State and its sectarian allies despise Shi’ites, whom they consider infidels.

Islamist terrorists have killed thousands of people in Pakistan since early 2000s in a bid to impose a hard-line version of Islam.