3 killed as gunmen fire on passenger bus in southwestern Pakistan

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the Kalat district of Balochistan province.

Gunmen opened fire on a passenger bus in southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding seven others, police and government officials said.

A security personnel stands guard along a street near the site of a school bus bombing in the Khuzdar district of Balochistan province. (AFP/File)

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the Kalat district of Balochistan province, where a number of separatist militant groups are seeking independence from Pakistan's government.

The bus was traveling from the Balochistan provincial capital of Quetta to the southern port city of Karachi when gunmen opened fire in Kalat and then fled the scene, local police chief Habib Nichari said. Ambulances were transporting the dead and wounded to a nearby hospital, he said.

The latest attack came days after gunmen abducted and killed nine people when they stopped two passenger buses on a highway in the Zhob and Loralai districts of Balochistan. Those buses were traveling from Quetta to the eastern Punjab province.

Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said security forces responded to the latest attack immediately, and an operation was underway to track down the culprits.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the attack and alleged that Indian-backed separatists were responsible. However, he offered no evidence to back up the claim. Pakistan routinely accuses the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army group of carrying out such attacks.

Baluchistan has been the scene of a long-running insurgency in southwestern Pakistan with an array of separatist groups, including the BLA, demanding independence from Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad. Although Pakistan says it has quelled the insurgency, violence in the province has persisted.