Gunmen Kill Five Shopkeepers in Pakistan

Unidentified gunmen on Wednesday killed five people in Pakistan's troubled southwest in an apparently ethnically motivated attack, police said.

The incident took place late Wednesday in a market in the central part of Quetta, the main town in the violence-stricken southwestern province of Baluchistan where separatists have intensified attacks against ethnic minorities and outsiders.

Senior police official Aitzaz Goraya told AFP that two gunmen on motorbike opened fire on two shops in the market, killing four shopkeepers on the spot and critically wounding three others.

One among the injured later succumbed to his injuries in hospital, Rashid Jamali, a doctor in the government-run hospital, told AFP.

"(The) condition of another shopkeeper is also critical and he is undergoing surgery," Jamali said.

Goraya said one of the injured was from the minority Hindu community.

"We are investigating but apparently it is an ethnically motivated attack," Goraya said.

No group has yet claimed responsibility but Baluch separatists are active in the area. They often attack government forces, installations and people who have settled in Baluchistan from central Punjab province.

In October, gunmen killed nine labourers in the town of Hub, some 640 kilometres (400 miles) southwest of Quetta and police at the time said the incident appeared to be an ethnically motivated.

Last month the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that more than 300,000 people including minority Shiites and Hindus had left Baluchistan over the past 10 years due to rising unrest.

The Hazara ethnic group was worst hit, with as many as 200,000 relocating to Pakistan's major cities or abroad. They are predominantly Shiite and easily identifiable due to their Central Asian features.

Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest but least developed and most sparsely populated province, is also racked by Islamist militants, banditry and sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites.