Quetta: Gunmen in south-west Pakistan shot dead two Shiites who had emigrated from neighbouring Afghanistan almost a decade ago to escape violence there, police said on Sunday.
Two men opened fire on Saturday night on the family, from Afghanistan’s Hazara community, who were at a bus station in Quetta preparing to travel to the southern city of Karachi.
“A man of about 65 years of age and his 18-year-old grandson were killed in the firing at the bus terminal at Sariyab road,” Imran Qureshi, a senior police official, told AFP.
Two other men and two women family members managed to run away and take shelter. The gunmen escaped on a motorbike.
Qureshi said the family had migrated from Afghanistan almost a decade ago to escape war in their homeland.
A man describing himself as a member of the banned Sunni Muslim extremist group Jaish ul Islam called media outlets to claim responsibility for the attack.
Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, which is torn both by a separatist insurgency and violence directed against Shiites.
They make up around 20 per cent of Pakistan’s population, which is largely Sunni Muslim.
According to a report by a Human Rights Watch, more than 400 Shiites were killed in targeted attacks across the country in 2013.
