Gunmen Kill 23 Bus Passengers in Pakistan's Turbulent Balochistan

Unidentified gunmen on Monday shot and killed at least 23 people from Pakistan's Punjab province in the troubled Balochistan province after offloading them from buses and checking their identities. The episode took place in Musakhel district of Balochistan.

SSP Ayub Khoso said that the militants belonging to an outlawed group had put up torch-wielding blocks at the highway in the Rarashim area of the Musakhel district and offloaded 23 passengers. He, however, did not identify the outfit.

"The passengers were told to get down from buses and shot dead after being identified from their national ID cards," Khoso said. "Most of those killed belonged to southern Punjab and some are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suggesting they were killed because of their ethnic background," he added.

He said that the armed men had also set some 12 vehicles on fire on the highway and then ran off into the nearby mountainous terrain. Police reached the spot and shifted the bodies to the hospital.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti strongly condemned the incident of terrorism. He expressed his deep sympathies and condolences with the families of those who lost their lives in the cowardly act by the terrorists.

"The terrorists and their facilitators will not be able to escape an exemplary end," he said, adding that the Balochistan government will pursue the terrorists.

The Musakhel attack came just short of four months since another in a string of such attacks on Punjab ethnic travelers. Back in April, nine passengers were offloaded from a bus near Noshki and shot dead after gunmen checked their ID cards.

Six labourers from Punjab were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Turbat in Balochistan's Kech district last October. The motive, said the police, was targeted. All of them hailed from different areas of southern Punjab, thus pointing to their having been targeted for their ethnic identity.

A similar incident occurred in 2015 when gunmen killed 20 construction workers and injured three others in a pre-dawn attack on a labourers' camp near Turbat.