Eight Shia Muslims gunned down in Quetta

Gunmen on Saturday shot dead eight Shia Muslims in two separate incidents of sectarian violence in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta, police said.

Senior police officer Shaukat Ajmad said that assailants opened fire on a car Saturday, killing six people in Quetta, reported the Associated Press.

Minutes later, they shot dead two people in a rickshaw in the same area.

AFP reported that five people were killed while one was wounded in the first incident.

“Two gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on a taxi cab killing five Shia Muslims and wounding another person,” local police official Ameer Mohammad Dasti told AFP.

He said in the second incident, two gunmen standing on a roadside shot dead two Shias, who passed by them on a motorbike.

A senior local police official Malik Arshad also confirmed the incidents and casualties and said: “The killings were part of sectarian violence in the city.”

Moreover, DawnNews reported that Frontier Constabulary has been deployed in the city to maintain the law and order situation.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Balochistan is rife with militancy and sectarian violence between majority Sunnis and minority Shia Muslims.

Demo held in Islamabad over Shia killings

On Friday, thousands of Pakistanis have staged a demonstration in the capital to express their outrage over the killings of Shia Muslims in the country.

About 2,500 people held a sit-in outside parliament in Islamabad, AFP reported.

The action was organized by the Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM), a Shia religious party.

Earlier this month, fourteen people were killed and dozens wounded in sectarian violence in northern Pakistan. The incident forced the government to deploy troops and impose a curfew in the northern towns of Gilgit and Chilas.

Human rights groups have vehemently criticized the Pakistani government for its failure to stem the rising tide of violence against the country’s Shia Muslims.

The protesters also called on the government to take immediate action against the forces involved in the sectarian killings and said more demonstrations would be staged if justice is not served.

Demonstrations were also held in the cities of Multan, Muzaffarabad, and Quetta, where protesters chanted slogans condemning the Shia killings.

Anti-Shia militant groups have been engaged in a violent campaign against Shias over the past few years.

Shia Muslims living in the remote Kurram tribal region have been facing a humanitarian crisis since November 2007, when pro-Taliban groups cut off the area from the rest of the country.

Local sources say more than 2,000 Shia Muslims have been killed in the Kurram region since 2007.

Pakistani security forces have been conducting operations against anti-Shia militant groups in the region since the beginning of 2012.

Security forces frequently clash with banned sectarian terrorist groups such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, which has conducted numerous terrorist operations against Shia Muslims over the past two decades.