Militants ambush bus in Pakistan, gun down 14

quetta — Gunmen wearing Pakistani police and paramilitary uniforms ambushed a bus before dawn on Thursday and killed 14 people after going through their ID cards and forcing them out on a remote part of a coastal highway in restive southwestern Baluchistan province, officials said.

Hours after the ambush, a new separatist group claimed responsibility for the killings. The attack drew nationwide condemnation and Prime Minister Imran Khan called it “an act of terror”.

Separatists in Baluchistan frequently target Pakistani security forces and also people from neighbouring Punjab province. Punjabis, a different ethnic group from the Baluch, tend to dominate the ranks of the military units stationed in Baluchistan that the separatists are fighting.

The attack took place as the bus was travelling on the Makran coastal highway between the port city of Karachi and the Gwadar port in the southwest, local official Jehangir Dashti said.

Dashti said the passengers targeted in the attack were killed after the assailants checked their identity cards but he could not confirm if all the slain were Punjabis. —

quetta — Gunmen killed at least 14 people after forcing them to disembark from buses on the Makran Coastal Highway in Balochistan, officials said on Thursday.

The attackers, who numbered around two dozen, were wearing uniforms of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, provincial home secretary Haider Ali said.

They “stopped buses on the Makran Coastal Highway and gunned down 14 people”, he said, adding that the four vehicles were travelling to Karachi from the coastal town of Ormara.

The gunmen identified non-Baloch passengers by their identity cards and shot them, he said. All the victims are believed to be Pakistani, with a naval official and a coast guard member among the dead.

Dawn reported that gunmen stopped five or six buses between 12.30am and 1am on Thursday. Around the Buzi Top area, the gunmen stopped the buses, checked the identity cards of passengers and offloaded about 16 of them. Fourteen passengers were immediately shot dead, while two passengers managed to escape and reached the nearest Levies check-post.

The attack was claimed by a Baloch separatist group. A militant spokesman denied that any civilian passengers had been killed and said the group had only targeted coast guard and navy service members.

The Pakistani Navy said its sailors and officers who were travelling to work were also among the slain men. One was a member of the coast guard. According to intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, nine employees of the Navy were among the dead.

Balochistan Home Minister Ziaullah Langove said the dead passengers had their legs and hands tied and were found close to the town of Ormara. Langove said a full-scale investigation had been launched into the attack, and authorities are trying to track down the gunmen.

Prime Minster Imran Khan also condemned the killings in a statement from his office. “PM has directed the authorities to make every possible effort to identify and to bring the perpetrators of the barbaric act to justice,” Khan’s office said in a statement.

The attack came less than a week after a suicide blast in Quetta killed 20 people. —