PAKISTAN: 4 Gunmen Riding 2 Motorcycles Sprayed Bullets From Automatic Weapons At A Bus MURDERING 14 INNOCENT CIVILIANS; Injured 6! The Victims Were On Their Way To Work! >:/

Khaleej Times

Gunmen kill 14 passengers 
in Quetta sectarian attack

written by Staff

Wednesday October 5, 2011

ISLAMABAD — Gunmen killed 14 people and wounded six in Quetta when they opened indiscriminate fire on a bus carrying Shias belonging to Hazara ethnic community.

Police said four assailants riding two motorcycles were involved in the attack. They sprayed bullets from automatic weapons and escaped leaving 14 dead in the bloodbath.

Police official Hamid Shakeel said the gunmen identified Hazara passengers in the bus and forced them to come out and line up before opening indiscriminate fire. Persian-speaking Hazaras have been the target of several killing incidents in which banned terrorist sectarian outfit Lshkar-i-Jhangvi is allegedly involved. In a brutal incident on September 20, gunmen lined up 26 Hazara passengers near Mastung west of provincial capital Quetta who were going in a bus to Iran and shot them dead in cold blood.

According to police, the victims were headed to work at a vegetable market in Akhtarabad on the outskirts of Quetta. Shakeel said the dead included 12 Shias and one Sunni. Seven people were wounded one of whom succumbed to injuries on way to hospital.

Several hundred Shia protesters gathered outside the Bolan Medical Complex where the dead and wounded had been shifted. They chanted slogans and later set on fire the bus involved in the incident. Protestors blocked the main highway on the outskirts of Quetta to protest the killings and set fire to the bus that took the dead and wounded to the hospital.

Local TV footage showed relatives wailing at the hospital where the dead and wounded were brought. One relative hugged a wounded man as another walked by, his clothes soaked with blood. London-based Amnesty International said the killings highlighted the failure of Pakistani authorities to address sectarian violence across the country.

“These are not random killings but demonstrate the deliberate targeting of the Shias by armed groups,” said Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi. “These attacks prove that without an urgent and comprehensive government response, no place is safe for the Shia,” Zarifi added.

The rights group said it had recorded details of at least 15 attacks specifically targeting Shiites across Pakistan.

“Continued failure to address sectarian violence will only exacerbate the general breakdown in law and order in Pakistan,” it said.