Outlawed group claims responsibility for pilgrims attack
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Islamabad, Sept 20, IRNA -- A banned extremist group claimed responsibility for attack on a bus, carrying Shiite Muslims in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Tuesday, which killed 26 people.
Three more Shia Muslims were killed in Quetta, the provincial capital, when they were going to hospital to collect bodies of those killed in the bus attack.
The outlawed Taliban-linked militant group ‘Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’ claimed responsibility for both attacks and warned more similar sectarian attacks.
A purported spokesman for the group, Ali Sher Haidary, called journalists in Quetta via phone and claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The bus driver who survived the attack told the media persons that the unidentified gunmen had arrived in a jeep and stopped the bus at Mastung district and asked all the passengers to come down of the bus and to stand in a queue and opened fire on them.
An official in the region said that 26 people died at the scene and several were injured.
The injured were admitted in a local hospital and critically injured were shifted to Quetta.
Emergency was declared in the Quetta main hospitals, health officials said.
The driver said that nearly 45 people, including several traders, were in the bus when it came was intercepted by the gunmen.
Local sources said that the gunmen continued firing for 10 minutes and then fled after believing that they have killed many of the passengers.
The bus was heading to Taftan from Quetta where it drops the pilgrims who cross the border into Iran to take another bus to visit religious site there.
Shia groups strongly condemned the attack and said the government should have taken steps for the security of the passengers in view of the recent sectarian-motivated attacks.
They said they would stage protest rallies against the incident across Pakistan and will press the government to arrest the culprits.
President Asif Ali Zardari has strongly condemned gun attack on a bus carrying Shia Muslims in Balochistan province on Tuesday evening, in which 26 people were killed and some others sustained injuries.
President termed the attack as inhuman and a brutal act of terrorism and said such cowardly acts cannot dent the government's resolve to fight this menace to the finish.
He expressed his deep sense of shock and grief over the loss of lives in this brutal act of terrorism and conveyed his sympathies to the families of the victims.
**1420
Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30573890
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