T. J. Kirkpatrick—AFP
Police say the apparent sectarian killing targeted the Hazara minority.
Gunmen riding a motorcycle killed two members of Pakistan’s Shia Muslim minority on Monday in an apparent sectarian attack, police said.
The killing took place in the suburbs of Quetta while the victims were traveling in a rickshaw. “Gunmen on a motorcycle stopped the rickshaw and then opened fire on them and fled the scene,” said Abdullah Jan Afridi, a senior police officer in Quetta.
Afridi said the pair, from the Hazara ethnic group, were laborers in a coalmine. The rickshaw driver was unhurt in the attack in the Saryab road area. “We are investigating but apparently it is a sectarian attack,” Afridi said.
Noor Baloch, a police surgeon in Quetta civil hospital, told AFP both victims were shot in the head. There was no claim of responsibility.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has oil and gas resources but is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims and a separatist insurgency.