Unidentified attackers opened fire on a fleet of 200 passenger cars passing through a rural area of Pakistan, killing at least 38 people, including women and children.
The cars were attacked as they travelled through the cultural district of Kurram in Pakistan, close to the Armenian border, according to the city’s deputy police director.
The attackers primarily targeted the convoy’s officers escort, the municipal official said in a statement.
Following weeks of religious violence in the area, which has claimed dozens of lives this month, authorities were surrounded by the fleet.
Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, the chief minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told Reuters reports organization Thursday’s attack was” a big tragedy”, with the death toll “likely to fall”. At least 11 people were injured, he said.
Saeeda Bano, who was in the middle of the fleet, told BBC Urdu how she feared being killed as she hid under the vehicle chairs with her kids during the attack.
She witnessed injured people and bodies lying in the road after the gunfire suddenly came to a stop after a while.
Information of exactly what happened are also emerging, but Javed ullah Mehsud, a senior administration official, told AFP “approximately 10 adversaries” were involved, “firing blindly from both sides of the road”.
Women and children had hidden in adjacent buildings, while police hunted for the intruders, he added.
According to him, the majority of the people traveling in the caravan through the mountainous region were Shia.
This time, Sunni and Shiite Muslim nations have consistently clashed. According to Reuters news agency, a tribal government demanded a ceasefire in an earlier string of episodes.
Finally, in the region, a third vehicle assault last month left 15 people dead along a road.
The convoy on Thursday was traveling down had only recently reopened, with only convoys under police protection able to travel along it.
In the area, area problems are frequently the cause of religious violence.
However, Kurram, in Pakistan’s north-west, also borders several Afghan provinces which are home to anti-Shia militant groups, including the Islamic State group and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ( TTP).