Gunmen on motorbikes attacked a bus carrying members of a religious minority in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Wednesday, killing 43 people and wounding 19 others, hospital officials said.
Six attackers used 9 mm pistols to shoot at the people on the bus, police said. After the attack, the bus was driven into a hospital parking lot with bullet holes riddled all along its side, said Salma Wahid, an official at the Memon Medical Institute Hospital in Karachi.
Most of the people in the bus were unconscious and splattered with blood, she said.<
The vehicle was carrying men, women and children from the Ismaili Muslim community, said Ahmed Chinoy, chairman of the Citizen Police Liaison Committee in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest and most populous city.
A violent extremist group that persecutes Pakistan’s Shiite Muslim minority claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to carry out more.
Ismailism is a Shiite sect. Unlike some other Shiite groups, Ismailis hadn’t been heavily targeted by militants in Pakistan previously.
This is the first such incident of its kind towards the Ismaili community, said Zohra Yusuf, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “Nothing on this scale has ever been seen before.