Quetta, January 3
ISIS took responsibility for an attack on Sunday that killed 11 minors belonging to the Pakistani Shiite Hazaras minority in Balochistan province.
The attack took place early Sunday morning in the Mach region of Bolan district, about 100 km southeast of Balochistan’s capital, Quetta, and killed the miners who were in a common living space near from the coal mine where they worked.
“All minors’ throats were cut after their hands were cuffed behind their backs and (they) were crossed blindly,” a security official told Reuters, asking for anonymity as he was not. allowed to talk to the media.
A video clip to WhatsApp groups, apparently filmed by a first responder, showed three bodies lying outside the room and the rest in puddles of blood.
“The murder of 11 innocent minors in Mach Balochistan is another cowardly and inhuman act of terrorism,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a tweet.
“I asked the Frontier Constabulary to use all possible resources to stop these killers and bring them to justice,” he said.
ISIS subsequently took responsibility for the attack through its news agency Amaq through its Telegram communications channel.
The attack came after a relative lull in nearly a year of violence against the province’s predominantly Shiite Hazara minority.
In April, a suicide bombing in the market killed 18 people, half of whom were Hazaras.
After Sunday’s attack, members of the Hazara minority in Quetta blocked the western bypass and set tires on fire to protest the killings.
Balochistan is at the center of the $ 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link between western China and southern Pakistan’s deep-water port, Gwadar.
The Hazaras have been frequently attacked by the Taliban and Islamic State militants, as well as other Sunni Muslim militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The attacks in Afghanistan were alleged by an Islamic State operative.
In 2013, more than 200 people were killed in three bombings in the Hazara neighborhoods of Quetta.
— Reuters
–
