At least 14 people have been killed after gunmen ambushed a bus in Pakistan‘s southwestern province of Balochistan, according to government officials.
“They were all bullet injuries, most were shot in the head,” Dr Muhammad Musa, a government health official who examined the bodies in Balochistan’s Ormara area, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
The attackers were wearing uniforms from the paramilitary Frontier Corps and forced passengers to disembark from the bus before shooting them, Provincial Home Secretary Haider Ali told AFP news agency.
The passengers were travelling from the southern city of Karachi to the port city of Gwadar by the Makran Coastal Highway when their bus was ambushed early on Thursday morning by masked gunmen near Ormara area, news website Dawn.com reported.
“This is a very remote place, about 60km from the nearest town in Ormara and 300km from Gwadar,” Asif Shawani, district health officer in Gwadar, told Al Jazeera.
An alliance of ethnic Baloch separatist armed groups has claimed responsibility for the attack in an emailed statement.
“… those who were targeted carried [identification] cards of the Pakistan Navy and Coast Guards, and they were only killed after they were identified,” the spokesperson for the Baloch Raaji Aajoi Sangar (BRAS) said in the statement.
More to follow
