Unidentified armed men, early on Monday morning, killed at least 23 people in Balochistan’s Musakhail district after offloading them from trucks and buses and shooting them after checking their identification cards.
In a statement to the AFP news agency, Musakhail Assistant Commissioner Najeeb Kakar said the armed men had blocked the inter-provincial highway in the Rarasham area of the district and offloaded passengers from several buses. “The dead are reportedly from Punjab,” he said, adding the extremists had also set fire to 10 vehicles.
He said, thus far, three of the victims were identified as hailing from Balochistan, while the rest were from Punjab. “Vehicles traveling to and from Punjab were inspected, and individuals from Punjab were identified and shot,” he added.
Police and Levies officials have reached the spot and shifted the bodies to the hospital, he added. Authorities have also launched an investigation into the attack.
This is the second attack within Balochistan thus far this year, aimed at executing Punjabis. In April, extremists offloaded nine passengers from a bus near Balochistan’s Naushki, shooting them dead after checking their ID cards and seeing their Punjab domiciles. Such attacks are part of an unfortunate pattern, with unidentified gunmen often targeting Punjabi laborers and travelers in Balochistan.
Condemnations
In separate statements, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the terrorist attack. Expressing grief and sorrow over the loss of precious lives in the despicable incident, they prayed for the departed souls and condoled with the bereaved families.
Zardari said the brutal killing of innocent people was an assault on all of humanity, and called for the culprits to be brought to justice. The prime minister, similarly, directed the local administration to fully cooperate with the bereaved families and provide medical aid to the injured.
“The terrorists responsible for this incident will be severely punished,” he vowed, adding any kind of terrorism was unacceptable in the country.
In a statement condemning the incident, Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti expressed sympathy and conveyed condolences to the families of those who were killed by the cowardly acts of terrorists. In a statement, he said terrorists and their facilitators would not be able to escape an exemplary end, adding the provincial government would pursue and apprehend the terrorists.
“The terrorists showed brutality by targeting innocent passengers near Musakhail,” Information Minister Ataullah Tarar said in a statement posted on X. “The terrorists and their facilitators will not be able to escape an exemplary end,” he added.
Punjab government spokesperson Azma Bukhari, speaking to Geo News, expressed anger over the incident and said the time had come to decide whether the whole country was united against such extremists.