Karachi: Two Hazara Shia Muslims were on shot dead by the Taliban militants riding a motorcycle in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's restive Balochistan province, in an apparent sectarian attack.
Police said that the assailants stopped the auto rickshaw in which the two Hazara men were travelling and shot them dead and then escaped from the scene.
"The two victims have been identified as Ghulam Nabi and Muhammad Nabi. They were apparently coming from Macch area and going home when they were gunned down," police officer Zulfiqar Ali said.
He said the victims were going to Alamdar colony where a large number of Hazara community members reside. Both victims were residents of Alamdar Road, an area dominated by Hazaras.
Ali said that both were labourers who worked in a coalmine and it appeared to be a sectarian attack.
The gunmen didn't attack the rickshaw driver. Noor Baloch, a police surgeon in Civil Hospital Quetta, confirmed that the victims had been shot dead in the head.
Shortly after the killing, a breakaway group of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the killing.
Members of the Hazara community in Quetta and other parts of the restive Balochistan province have frequently come under attack by militants and sectarian groups.
Five Hazara men were killed on Quetta's Circular Road area near Meezan Chowk in June. They were sitting outside a tea shop when gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on them.
In May, three Hazara Shia Muslims were killed, including two women, in separate incidents of sectarian violence. In October, 2014 a suicide bomber blew himself up at Hazara Township killing six people and injuring dozens.
In February 2013, a bomb blast at the Hazara township in Quetta killed 110 people and injured 200 others.
