QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Police says gunmen have killed 12 Shiite Muslims in southwest Pakistan in an apparent sectarian attack.
Police official Hamid Shakeel says the attackers stopped the Shiites Tuesday as they were riding on a bus on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
The gunmen forced them to stand in a line and then opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding six others. It is unclear if those wounded were also Shiites.
Pakistan is a majority Sunni Muslim state. Although most Sunnis and Shiites in Pakistan live together peacefully, extremist attacks occur fairly frequently.
The Sunni-Shiite schism over the true heir to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad dates back to the seventh century.
