MOSCOW, October 19 (RIA Novosti) – Gunmen killed nine people in Southwestern Pakistan on Sunday, AFP reports.
The victims were abducted and later murdered while working in Pakistan’s province of Baluchistan. They were laborers from Pakistan’s central province of Punjab who worked on a poultry farm, Bashir Brohi, a senior police officer, AP said.
The shooting happened in the early hours of the Sunday morning in the town of Hub, an industrial city about 640 kilometers from Quetta, Baluchistan’s capital.
The attack appears to be ethnically-motivated; after kidnapping 11 workers, the gunmen questioned them about their ethnicities. Then, they blindfolded nine laborers from Punjab and shot them, while setting two Baluch workers free, Sky News Australia reports.
Hub is an industrial town that attracts laborers from other parts of Pakistan.
The parched province is relatively underpopulated, but it is rich in mineral and gas resources. Baluch nationalists seek complete autonomy from Pakistan in search of the province’s economic wealth, Sky News Australia said.
