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Monday, April 15, 2024

14 bus passengers offloaded, shot dead on Makran Coastal Highway

AFP |

Gunmen killed at least 14 people after forcing them to disembark from buses on the Makran Coastal Highway in Balochistan’s Ormara area, officials said Thursday.

According to Balochistan Inspector General of Police Mohsin Hassan in the Buzi Top area, between 12:30am and 1am, the gunmen stopped a bus, checked the identity cards of passengers, offloaded about 16 of them and shot them dead, local media reported.

A naval official and a coast guard member were among those killed, Ali said. All the victims are believed to be Pakistani.

The attackers, who numbered around two dozen, were wearing uniforms from the paramilitary Frontier Corps, provincial home secretary Haider Ali told AFP.

They “stopped buses on the Makran Coastal Highway and gunned down 14 people”, he said, adding that the four vehicles were travelling to the port megacity of Karachi from the coastal town of Ormara.

A naval official and a coast guard member were among those killed, Ali said. All the victims are believed to be Pakistani.

Gunmen killed at least 14 people after forcing them to disembark from buses on the Makran Coastal Highway in Balochistan’s Ormara area.

Provincial home minister Mir Zia Langov told AFP a full-scale investigation had been launched into the attack and to track down the gunmen, who he said had fled the scene.

“Such incidents are intolerable and we will not spare the terrorists who carried out this dastardly attack,” he said. Prime Minster Imran Khan also condemned the killings in a statement from his office.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which came less than a week after a suicide blast in provincial capital Quetta killed 20 people.

© Agence France-Presse