Gunmen ambush Shi’ite bus in Pakistan, killing 18.

 

Gunmen ambush Shi’ite bus in Pakistan, killing 18.(Fox).At least 18 people were killed on Tuesday when gunmen opened fire on a bus in Pakistan’s mountainous northern district of Kohistan, police officials said.“Armed men hiding on both sides of the road attacked the bus,” local police chief Mohammad Ilyas told AFP news agency.“Initial reports said 18 people have died and eight wounded,” he added.A spokesman for a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, a Sunni militant group, claimed responsibility for the killings.Around 27 other people on the bus were spared.Haji Abdul Ghafoor, owner of restaurant in Mansehra where the bus stopped for dinner on Monday night, said there were around 45 people on board.
The bus was traveling from the central Pakistan city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, to the northern town of Gilgit, according to Reuters news agency.Police said that the motive for the attack was unclear as Islamist militants are not active in the area. However, another police source told Reuters that the Islamic affiliation of the passengers could have sparked the violence.“All the people on board were Shi’ites, and at the moment it looks like they were targeted by armed men from the local Sunni community,” a senior police official told Reuters.Police officials said the bus came under attack in an area inhabited by two Sunni tribes about 165 kilometers (102 miles) north of Islamabad.Both communities largely live in peace with each other but militants from the two sides have killed thousands of people in tit-for-tat attacks since the beginning of Islamist militancy in the country in the 1980s.The Jandullah faction of the Pakistani Taliban -- one of the country's deadliest and best organized militant groups -- claimed responsibility."They were Shiite infidels and our mujahedeen shot them dead one by one after bringing them down from a bus," said Ahmed Marwat, a purported commander, who called an Associated Press reporter from an undisclosed location.Read the full story here.