QUETTA, Pakistan – The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack Sunday in which 11 Pakistani Shiite Hazaras miners were killed in Baluchistan province.
The attack took place early Sunday morning in the Mach area of the Bolan district, about 100 kilometers southeast of the capital of Baluchistan, Quetta.
‘The throats of all coal miners were cut after their hands were tied behind their backs [they were] blindfolded, “a security official told Reuters, asking for anonymity as he was not allowed to speak to the media.
In a video clip that WhatsApp groups make, apparently through a first response, three bodies are lying outside the room, and the rest inside are pooled with blood.
“The condemnatory killing of 11 innocent coal miners in Mach Baluchistan is another cowardly inhuman act of terrorism,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a tweet.
“Asked Frontier Constabulary to use all resources to catch these killers and bring them to justice,” he said.
The Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq news agency via its Telegram communication channel.
The attack came after a relative silence in almost a year of violence against the predominantly Shiite Hazara minority in the province.
In April, 18 people were killed by a suicide bombing on the market, half of which were Hazaras.
After the attack on Sunday, members of the Hazara minority in Quetta blocked the western bypass and set tires on fire to protest against the killings.
Baluchistan is the focus of the $ 60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transportation and energy connection planned between western China and Pakistan’s southern deep-water port, Gwadar.
Hazaras are regularly targeted by Taliban and Islamic State militants and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The attacks in Afghanistan were claimed by a subsidiary of the Islamic State.
In 2013, three bombings killed more than 200 people in Hazara neighborhoods in Quetta.