Police superintendent Najib Khan said there were six gunmen and that all 43 passengers killed were Ismailis, a minority Shi’ite Muslim sect. Pakistan is mostly Sunni.
KARACHI – Gunmen on motorcycles boarded a bus and opened fire on commuters in Pakistan’s volatile southern city of Karachi on Wednesday, killing at least 43, officials said, in the latest attack directed against religious minorities this year.
The pink bus was pockmarked with bullet holes and blood saturated the seats and dripped out of the doors on to the concrete.
“As the gunmen climbed on to the bus, one of them shouted, ‘Kill them all!’ Then they started indiscriminately firing at everyone they saw,” a wounded woman told a television channel by phone.
Police superintendent Najib Khan said there were six gunmen and that all the passengers were Ismailis, a minority Shi’ite Muslim sect. Pakistan is mostly Sunni.
Qadir Baluch, a security guard at a nearby building, said he heard the gunshots and saw at least one of the militants wearing a police uniform. The attack riddled the bus with bullet holes, but its wounded driver still could drive it to a nearby hospital, said Mohammad Imran, a guard there.
Imran said when he got on the bus later, he saw blood still seeping across its seats and floor. Blood stained Imran’s own hands and uniform. “I hardly saw any survivor,” he said.
Militant group Jundullah, which has attacked Muslim minorities before, claimed responsibility. The group has links with the Pakistani Taliban and pledged allegiance to Islamic State in November.
“These killed people were Ismaili and we consider them kafir (non-Muslim). We had four attackers. In the coming days we will attack Ismailis, Shi’ites and Christians,” spokesperson Ahmed Marwat said.
Later in the day, the Islamic State group said in a statement posted on jihadist Twitter accounts, “Thanks be to Allah, 43 apostates were killed and around 30 were wounded in an attack carried out by Islamic State soldiers on a bus transporting Shiite Ismaili infidels in the city of Karachi.”
It was the first official claim of responsibility by the IS leadership of an attack in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
IS, which has seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, announced in January the creation of a branch in what it called “Khorasan province”, encompassing Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of surrounding countries.
Outside the hospital where the wounded were taken, and where the bus was parked, scores of grim-faced young men formed a human chain to block everyone but families and doctors.
A sobbing middle-aged man said: “I have come to collect the body of my young son. He was a student preparing for his first year exams at college.”
Emails and Facebook posts on Ismaili pages encouraged the community not respond or say anything that might further endanger them.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he was saddened by the attack.
“This is a very patriotic and peaceful people who have always worked for the wellbeing of Pakistan,” he said. “This is an attempt to spread divisions in the country.”
