QUETTA: Unidentified gunmen shot dead three people including a senior official of the Geological Survey of Pakistan on Wednesday in the southwestern province of Balochistan, police said.

According to police officials, assailants opened fire at a shop near Burma Hotel on Quetta’s Sariab Road severely wounding two people.

Both men, identified as Abdul Kareem and Saleh Mohammad, passed away while being transported to the hospital. The unknown gunmen were able to escape the scene, police said.

Earlier in the day, in an apparent sectarian attack, Mohsin Ali Naqvi, a member of the Shia community, was gunned down outside his office also on Quetta’s Sariab Road, said Mohammed Ayaz, a senior police official.

Mohsin Ali Naqvi, a member of the minority Shia community, was gunned down outside his office in Quetta, the Balochistan capital, Mohammed Ayaz, a senior police official, told AFP.

“We are investigating the crime but it seems a case of sectarian killing. There is a wave of sectarian killing in the country and this is part of that,”Ayaz said.

Another official who is in charge of the local police station said the gunmen were waiting for Naqvi, a deputy director of the Survey, at the main gate of his office.

“Two gunmen were waiting for him at the main gate of his office. They fired bullets at him from close range and escaped,” said Noor Bukhsh. “His family said they had no feud with anybody and Naqvi was killed because he was Shia.”

Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is plagued by sectarian violence as well as Taliban attacks and a separatist insurgency.

Sectarian violence has killed more than 4,000 people since the late 1990s. Last month a Shia judge was shot dead in Quetta along with his driver and police bodyguard.