Gunmen abduct and kill 9 passengers from 2 buses on a southwestern Pakistan highway

Gunmen in southwestern Pakistan abducted and killed nine people after stopping two passenger buses on a highway Thursday night, officials said.

The overnight attacks occurred in the Zhob and Loralai districts of Balochistan province as the buses traveled from the provincial capital, Quetta, to Punjab province, district administrator Saadat Husain said Friday.

The attackers fled the scene and a search is underway to track down the assailants. Authorities recovered the bodies along the highway, Husain said.

Ashfaq Chaudhry, an administrator in Punjab’s Dera Ghazi Khan district, said the attackers appeared to target passengers from Punjab specifically.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the abduction and killings of the bus passengers.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari issued a statement condemning the “brutal killing of passengers” in Balochistan. He blamed the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army for the deaths and said the group wanted to “spread chaos and instability in Pakistan.”

The BLA killed 23 passengers in Balochistan in a similar attack last year. However, the militant group issued a statement saying on Thursday night it was engaged in an attack on a military camp in Balochistan’s Surab district, far away from the areas of the bus attacks.

Baluchistan has been the scene of a long-running insurgency in southwestern Pakistan with an array of separatist groups, including the BLA, demanding independence from Pakistan’s central government in Islamabad. The groups have staged attacks mainly targeting security forces and people from Punjab who travel to Balochistan for business or employment.

Although Pakistani authorities say they have quelled the insurgency, violence in the province has persisted.

The Pakistani government has routinely blamed India for backing the Pakistani Taliban and Baloch insurgents in Pakistan.