Gunmen kill 9 passengers in Pakistan's Balochistan

Karachi | Insurgents shot and killed nine passengers from Punjab after offloading them from a passenger bus in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province on Friday, according to authorities.

The incident took place on the national highway in the Zhob area of the province, said Assistant Commissioner Zhob Naveed Alam.

The armed insurgents checked ID cards of passengers and offloaded nine of them from the bus going from Quetta to Lahore, and shot them dead.

All nine belonged to different parts of the Punjab province, Alam said.

“We have moved the nine bodies to the hospital for post-mortem and burial procedures,” he said.

This is not the first time that insurgents have targeted people belonging to the Punjab province and passenger buses plying on different highways in Balochistan.

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.

Meanwhile, insurgents also carried out three other terrorist attacks in Quetta, Loralai and Mastung, but spokesperson for the Balochistan government Shahid Rind claimed security forces repulsed these attacks.

Unconfirmed reports in the Balochistan media claimed that insurgents had struck at several places in the province during the night and engaged security forces by attacking check posts, government installations, police stations, banks, and communication towers.

While Rind confirmed the attacks, he said there were no reports of casualties in any of them.

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.

In March, five people working on long body trailers were shot dead in the Kalmat area near Gwadar port, while in February, insurgents offloaded seven passengers belonging to the Punjab province and killed them on the spot in the Barkhan area.