dpa
Islamabad
Gunmen intercepted and fired at a convoy of vehicles carrying Shiite Muslin in Pakistan on Thursday, killing 42 people in one of the worse sectarian attacks in recent times amid a surge in deadly violence, an official said.
Around a dozen gunmen armed with automatic weapons targeted the convoy on a highway in the north-western Kurram region near the Afghan border, local police chief Saleem Shah told DPA.
At least six women were among the dead while nearly a dozen injured people were being treated in hospital, another official, Wajid Hussain, said.
Kurram is a mountainous region near the country’s border with Afghanistan, and is predominantly home to Shiite Muslims. The community faces frequent attacks by Sunni extremist groups.
No group has claimed the responsibility for the latest attack, though the Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State have been behind the killing of Shiite Muslims in the past.
Nearly 100 people were killed in a sectarian strife in the same region earlier this year when Shiite neighbourhoods were attacked by Sunni groups.
The ambush comes as the South Asian nuclear power faces a steep rise in attacks by Islamist militants including the Pakistani Taliban group, which allegedly operates from Afghanistan. At least 12 Pakistani soldiers were killed when a Taliban suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a military outpost in a region adjacent to Kurram.
Pakistan’s military has pushed back the Taliban in a series of offensives since 2014, but they have been seeking to resurge since their counterparts took control of Afghanistan in 2021.