QUETTA: Two brothers belonging to the Shia Hazara community and a policeman were gunned down here on Monday.

Three other people, a woman among them, were injured when a group of men fired indiscriminately on them near the passport office in the Joint Road area.

Police said at least one attacker was injured when the policeman who had been hit by a bullet and later died, fired back. The constable was identified as Kala Khan. He was going to the offices of a private TV channel where he had been deployed for security duty.

“Four members of a family belonging to the Shia Hazara community and other people were standing outside the passport office when they came under attack,” Capital City Police officer Abdul Razzak Cheema said.

Another police official said the masked assailants used advanced weapons.

Police and Frontier Corps personnel and rescue teams took the dead and the injured to the Civil Hospital where doctors said that the deceased had been hit in the head.

Those who had suffered serious injuries were transferred to the Combined Military Hospital where they were in the Intensive Care Unit.

The deceased brothers were identified as Hassan Hazara and Shabbir Hazara and the injured as Naimatullah, Khuda-i-Dost and Fatima Bibi.

Soon after the incident, shops in the area downed their shutters.

Law-enforcement agencies cordoned off the area to look for the assailants.

Police termed it a sectarian attack and said that a “sectarian group may be behind the incident”.

Later, a large number of people took the bodies to the IG Police Office and held a sit-in. They shouted slogans against police and other law-enforcement agencies for their failure to provide security and protection to the Hazara community.

The Hazara Democratic Party, the Anjuman Wahdatul Muslimeen, the Shia Ulema Council and other organisations and members of the civil society condemned the killings and demanded immediate arrest of the killers.

AFP adds: The brothers were entering the passport office along with their parents when the waiting gunmen opened fire.

“The boys, in their twenties, were killed in the shooting while their parents were wounded and a policeman who was passing by the site was also killed after he shot and wounded one attacker,” CPO Abdul Razzak Cheema said.

He added that two gunmen were involved in the shooting but they had others to assist them in escaping the scene.

Balochistan Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani confirmed the casualties.

Police later said they had arrested the wounded suspect who claimed that he was not with the attacker but just a passerby.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2015

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