Gunmen kill two members of Hazara community in Quetta

The killing took place in the suburbs of Quetta, the provincial capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, while the victims were travelling in a rickshaw.

“Gunmen on a motorcycle stopped the rickshaw and then opened fire on them and fled the scene,” Abdullah Jan Afridi, a senior police officer in Quetta.

Afridi said the pair, from the Hazara ethnic group, were labourers in a coalmine. The rickshaw driver was unhurt in the attack in the Saryab road area.

“We are investigating but apparently it is a sectarian attack,” Afridi said.

Noor Baloch, a police surgeon in Quetta civil hospital, said both victims were shot in the head.

There was no claim of responsibility.

Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has oil and gas resources but is afflicted by militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency.

Sectarian violence has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade.