Attackers on motorcycles yesterday shot dead four policemen in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, police said.
The shooting took place in Pashtunabad, a low-income neighborhood on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of restive Balochistan Province, when policemen were patrolling the area.
“Four gunmen on two motorcycles sprayed bullets on a police vehicle and four policemen were martyred,” senior police official Abul Razzaq Cheema told reporters.
Another senior police official, Aitzaz Goraya, confirmed the incident and said it was an act of terrorism.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Baluch separatist groups demanding more autonomy and control over the province’s gas and mineral resources have frequently targeted security forces and police for years.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a statement “strongly condemned” the killings, adding that “such incidents cannot weaken [the] government’s resolve in eliminating the menace of terrorism and extremism.”
The province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is also riven by sectarian strife and Muslim extremist violence.
Resource-rich Balochistan is the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces, but its roughly 7 million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.
Meanwhile, three suspected rebels were killed in a gunfight yesterday after they entered the Indian part of Kashmir from the Pakistani side, an Indian army spokesman said.
Soldiers intercepted the militants early yesterday in the border district of Kupwara, Indian Army Lieutenant Colonel Nitin Joshi said.
The army did not suffer any casualties in the battle, Joshi said. There was no independent confirmation of the fighting.
Kashmir in its entirety is claimed by both India and Pakistan.
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