PAKISTAN: POLICE DETAIN 18 MEN AFTER GUNMEN KILL AT LEAST 11 POLICE RECRUITS IN SOUTHWESTERN PAKISTANI CITY OF QUETTA

Record ID: 377103

  • Title: PAKISTAN: POLICE DETAIN 18 MEN AFTER GUNMEN KILL AT LEAST 11 POLICE RECRUITS IN SOUTHWESTERN PAKISTANI CITY OF QUETTA
  • Date: 8th June 2003
  • Summary: (U6) QUETTA, PAKISTAN (JUNE 8, 2003) (REUTERS) 1. VARIOUS NIGHT VIEWS OF ROAD WHERE AT LEAST 11 POLICE RECRUITS WERE KILLED AND NINE OTHERS WOUNDED WHEN GUNMEN RAKED THEIR VEHICLE WITH GUNFIRE / BLOOD ON ROAD (CIRCLED WITH STONES) (4 SHOTS) 0.23 2. SV: STRETCHER COVERED IN BLOOD 0.27 3. VARIOUS OF DEAD POLICE RECRUITS; PEOPLE MOURNING OVER
  • Embargoed: 23rd June 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: QUETTA, PAKISTAN
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Reuters ID: LVABJWEOE8RNRX77Q9XKSH2NC965
  • Story Text: Pakistan has held 18 men, after gunmen on motorcycles
    killed at least 11 police recruits in the southwestern
    Pakistani city of Quetta.


    Pakistani police said on Monday (June 9) they had
    detained at least 18 members of a banned sectarian militant
    group suspected of involvement in a bloody attack on police
    recruits in the southwestern city of Quetta.

    Gunmen on motorcycles killed 11 police recruits and
    wounded nine on Sunday (June 8) when they raked their vehicle
    with gunfire. All the dead were ethnic Hazaras, belonging to
    the minority Shi'ite strand of Islam.

    Humayun Jogezai, deputy police chief in Baluchistan
    province, said police had rounded up members of the outlawed
    radical Sunni Muslim group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) in
    overnight raids in Quetta.

    Pakistan outlawed several Islamic militant groups,
    including SSP, last year as part of a crackdown on Islamic
    extremists following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the
    United States and an assault on the Indian parliament in
    December 2001.

    Business centres, schools and offices were shut in Quetta
    on Monday to mourn the police recruits, while Hazara community
    leaders have also called for three days of mourning across the
    arid province.

    Around 7,000 Hazara tribesmen gathered around the hospital
    to collect the bodies early on Monday. They shouted
    anti-government slogans -- and some anti-Sunni slogans. The
    Hazaras carried the body of one victim in a procession through
    the city.

    Police officials said two police teams were investigating
    the case, while security had been stepped up at Sunni and
    Shi'ite places of worship across the city and in business
    areas.

    Hundreds of people have been killed in sectarian violence
    in Pakistan in recent years in attacks involving militant
    organisations from the Sunni and Shi'ite sects.

    Most of the victims of the sectarian violence have been
    Shi'ites, who account for about 15 percent of Pakistan's 140
    million population.

    Tension between the two communities grew after the 1979
    Islamic Revolution in neighbouring Iran. Members of the two
    branches of Islam eat, work and socialise together, but
    intermarriage is rare.



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