Incident

Home page

Incident

Gunmen kill 13 in ambush of Pakistan Shiites

26 March 2011 00:20 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Thirteen people were killed when gunmen opened fire Friday on two vehicles carrying Shiite Muslims in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region in suspected sectarian violence, officials said, APA reports quoting AFP.
Another 11 people were wounded when the vehicles were ambushed in Bagan, in Kurram district near the Afghan border, and a security official said the victims "were all Shiite Muslims".
The area has a history of sectarian clashes between Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites.
Khalid Umarzai, a senior administrative official, confirmed the incident and said the attackers also kidnapped as many as 35 Shiites travelling in three coaches before fleeing.
"At least 13 people were killed and 11 others were wounded in the firing incident today morning," Umarzai told AFP. "Up to 35 others were kidnapped."
Local administration official Fazal Hussain told AFP the Shiites were heading in a three-vehicle caravan from the northwestern city of Parachinar to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
"The attackers came in two vehicles. They opened fire and fled," he said, adding that the dead included a woman and a child.
Entrenched militants oppose jobs and education for women in the deeply conservative tribal region of Kurram, which has for five years been a flashpoint for violence between Shiite and Sunni communities.
Shiites account for some 20 percent of Pakistan’s mostly Sunni Muslim population of 160 million.
More than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence between the groups since the late 1980s.