At least 23 people have been killed in Balochistan’s Musakhail district after armed men offloaded passengers from trucks and buses early Monday morning and shot at them after checking their identities, an official said.
According to Musakhail Assistant Commissioner Najeeb Kakar, armed men blocked the inter-provincial highway in the Rarasham area of the district and offloaded passengers from several buses.
The perpetrators stopped buses, vans, and trucks, one after the other on a highway connecting Punjab with Balochistan, AC Kakar told AFP.
“The numbers of the militants were between 30 to 40. They stopped 22 vehicles,” he said. “Vehicles travelling to and from Punjab were inspected, and individuals from Punjab were identified and shot.”
Those killed were reportedly from Punjab, the official said.
AC Kakar added that the armed men also set fire to 23 vehicles, including 17 trucks, two passenger vans and four pick-up vehicles.
The police and Levies officials reached the spot and began shifting the bodies to the hospital, Kakar said.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most active militant group in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack, marking it as one of the worst shootings in the region in recent years.
AC Kakar further informed AFP that three of the victims were from Balochistan, while the rest were from Punjab.
This is the second attack of such nature this year. In April, nine passengers were offloaded from a bus near Balochistan’s Noshki city and shot dead after gunmen checked their ID cards.
There were at least 170 militant attacks killing 151 civilians and 114 security personnel in Balochistan last year, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
Similar attacks have taken place over the past few years.
In October last year, unidentified gunmen fatally shot six labourers hailing from Punjab in Turbat in Balochistan’s Kech district. According to the police, the killings were targeted. All victims belonged to different areas of southern Punjab, suggesting they had been chosen for their ethnic background.
In 2019, gunmen stopped a bus near Ormara near Gwadar district, and shot dead 14 people, including personnel of the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guards, after checking their CNICs.
A similar incident occurred in 2015 when gunmen killed 20 construction workers and injured three others in a pre-dawn attack on a labourers’ camp near Turbat. The victims belonged to Sindh and Punjab.
