QUETTA, Pakistan – The Islamic State group took responsibility for an attack on Sunday that killed 11 miners from Pakistan’s Shia minority Hazaras in Balochistan province.
The attack took place on Sunday morning in the Mach area in the Bolan district, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of the capital of Baluchistan, Quetta, killing miners who were in a shared residential room near the coal mine where they worked , officials said.
“The throats of all coal miners were cut, after their hands were tied behind their backs and [they were] armored, ”a security official told Reuters, asking for anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to the media.
A video clip circulating in WhatsApp groups, apparently filmed by a rescuer, showed three bodies lying outside the room and the rest in pools of blood.
“The damning death of 11 innocent coal miners in Mach Baluchistan is yet another cowardly and inhuman act of terrorism,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a tweet.
“They asked the Border Police to use all resources to arrest these killers and bring them to justice,” he said.
Subsequently, Islamic State took responsibility for the attack, through its news agency Amaq, through the Telegram communication channel.
The attack came after a relative lull in almost a year of violence against the Shiite minority Hazara in the province.
In April, a suicide bombing killed 18 people, half of whom were Hazara.
After Sunday’s attack, members of the Hazara minority in Quetta blocked the west diversion and set tires on fire to protest the killings.
Baluchistan is the focus of the $ 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a planned transport and energy connection between western China and the deepwater port of Gwadar in southern Pakistan.
Hazara have often been targets of Taliban and Islamic State militants and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The attacks in Afghanistan were claimed by an Islamic State affiliate.
In 2013, three attacks killed more than 200 people in the Hazara neighborhoods in Quetta.