Gunmen Kill Seven Shiites in Pakistan

Gunmen shot dead seven Shiite Muslims in two separate incidents in Pakistan's troubled southwestern province of Baluchistan on Saturday, police said.

The incidents took place near Quetta, the capital of the oil and gas rich province, which is plagued by sectarian violence.

"Four gunmen riding two motorbikes intercepted a bus near Hazarganji area, pulled five Shiite vegetable sellers off the vehicle and shot them dead," senior local police official Wazir Khan Nasir told Agence France Presse.

He said in a second incident, two motorbike riders sprayed bullets at two Shiites in Hazarganji area, on the outskirts of Quetta, killing both of them.

Another local police official Mukhtar Musakhel confirmed the incident and casualties.

Nobody has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks but the province suffers from Taliban attacks and is also a flashpoint for sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has left thousands of people dead since the late 1980s.

Baluch rebels also rose up in 2004, demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the oil, gas and mineral resources in the region.

Elsewhere on Saturday two people were killed and three others wounded in a mortar fire by militants in the restive tribal region of Bajaur near the Afghan border, a security official said.

An intelligence official, however, put the death toll at three and blamed the attack on militants who fled to Afghanistan in the wake of military operations in the northwestern Swat valley and Bajaur.

Fighting in Bajaur in the past week has claimed at least 50 lives, including 31 militants and two members of a government-backed peace committee who were killed on Monday.

Bajaur is one of seven districts in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt, where Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants have carved out strongholds used to plot attacks on Pakistan.