QUETTA: Unidentified bastard armed men killed eight innocent Shiite Muslims, members of the ethnic Hazara community and injured six others in the Hazar Ganji area of Quetta, the capital of the volatile Balochistan province, on Thursday morning.
Imran Qureshi, a senior police officer said that the armed men opened fire at a Mazda bus and killed eight members of the Hazara community.
"The assailants sprayed bullets over the bus and managed to escape unhurt from the spot," Qureshi said.
The bodies were brought to the Bolan Medical Complex hospital where a large number of people had gathered. Qureshi said initially six people had been killed, however, two more succumbed to injuries on way to the hospital.
"This is an act of targeted killing," he said. Panic prevailed among locals after the killings.
The predominantly Shia community whose members stand out on account of their Central Asian features has come under increasing attacks by extremist groups such as the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ).
Estimates provided by Tahir Hussain Khan, president of the Balochistan chapter of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan(HRCP), earlier this month show that the violence has driven as many as 200,000 Hazaras to relocate to other major cities of Pakistan or move abroad.
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