(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The bus No. 8371 owned by Mashaburum private bus service was carrying at least 39 passengers on board from Gilgit to Rawalpindi.
Eight armed terrorists of banned outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi stopped two buses and a coaster. The terrorists were reported to be in Army uniform. They asked the passengers to get off the bus and shot them after checking their CNICs.
“All the people on board were Shia Muslims, and at the moment it looks like they were targeted by armed men from the local Sunni community,” a senior police official told Reuters.
A spokesman belongs to Jandullah faction of the Pakistani Taliban, a Sunni militant group, claimed responsibility for the killings.
The bodies of martyrs have been kept at Shatial hospital.
Abdul Sattar, a local lawmaker (MP), said eight gunmen were involved in the ambush, and all were wearing military uniforms, presumably to make it easier to stop the bus.
Kohistan borders the Swat valley, where Pakistan in 2009 managed to put down a two-year Taliban insurgency.
Human rights groups have heavily criticised the Pakistani government for failing to crackdown on sectarian violence between the country’s majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslim communities that has killed thousands.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had strongly condemned the Kohistan incident.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik has sought an investigative report from the Inspector-General of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Wahhabism is a vigorously radicalized interpretation of Islam openly sponsored and propagated by the US-backed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which considers killing of opponents of the ideology, especially the Shias but including Sunnis, as legitimate.
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