At least 11 people, 10 of them Shias, were killed and four others wounded when a passenger van was attacked on its way into the city from a nearby Hazara town, a few hundred metres from the office of the deputy inspector general (Operations).
The banned militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the deadly assault. Ten of the passengers, including a woman, were killed on the spot and a rickshaw driver passing by was also shot and killed in the attack. The driver of the vehicle lost control after the intense firing and it plunged into a ditch by the road. Police rushed to the spot and the people gathered there moved the bodies and the injured to the nearby Bolan Medical Complex.
Eyewitness Subzal Khan told Pakistan Today that three gunmen were waiting in a white car and when the van carrying the Persian-speaking Hazara people reached there, they got out of the car and started shooting indiscriminately with an assault rifle. He said the attackers then fled from the scene. After the incident, some 300 Shias from the Hazara community rushed to the hospital and a violent protest erupted. They set on fire two vehicles and the motorcycle of a cameraman from a foreign news agency and damaged at least three shops and a hotel.
They also threw stones at traffic on main Brewery Road. Police soon arrived to diffuse the situation, however, after some of the protesters fired shots into the air. Balochistan Police Inspector General Rao Amin Hashim told Pakistan Today that 250 suspects were taken into custody in various raids in the wake of Friday’s attack on pilgrims at a bus terminal in Sariab. He said police had already started screening the suspects and would release them if they were proven innocent.
Meanwhile, Ali Sher Haideri, who claims to be a spokesman for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, called various newspapers and TV channels and claimed responsibility for the attack, saying attacks on Shias would continue.
11 more fall prey to sectarian strife in Quetta
