QUETTA: Militants abducted and shot dead at least nine bus passengers travelling through Balochistan, government officials said Friday. The militants boarded two buses on a major highway and checked passengers’ identity cards before forcing nine people off the vehicles at gunpoint overnight on Thursday.
“The terrorists forced the two passenger buses to stop on a highway and pulled nine passengers out. They took them in an area nearby and killed all of them,” local government official Naveed Alam told AFP.
The attackers specifically targeted people from Punjab, the country’s most populous and prosperous province and a major recruitment base for the military.
“The forces found the dead bodies all belong to different areas of Punjab,” said Saadat Hussain, another senior government official. The Balochistan Liberation Front (BLA), a separatist group fighting the state, later claimed responsibility for the attack.