QUETTA, Pakistan: Two Christians were killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church in southwestern Pakistan Sunday, officials said. It was the second such attack on the minority community in the area this month.
Unidentified gunmen on motorbikes opened fire at a group of Christians outside a church in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province.
“Four men on two motorbikes opened indiscriminate fire, killing two people while injuring three others,” local police official Abdul Razzaq Cheema told AFP.
The attack happened in the Christian-majority Esa Nagri neighborhood of Quetta. Hundreds of people gathered later to protest the killings.
“Around 500” protesters blocked a road by placing the bodies of the two victims in the middle, said local official Javed Anwar Shawani.
“We are negotiating with them to make them disperse and bury” the victims, he added.
The shooting comes just weeks after four Christians were shot dead in the city, an attack claimed by the Daesh group.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Sunday shooting. Islamist militants have claimed past attacks on religious minorities in the area.
In December last year, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Quetta church, which was packed with worshippers, killing nine people and wounding over a dozen.
Christians make up less than two percent of Muslim-majority Pakistan’s 200 million people, and have long faced discrimination and violence.
Two Christians killed in drive-by shooting outside a church in Pakistan
Two Christians killed in drive-by shooting outside a church in Pakistan
- Gunmen on board motorcycles fired indiscriminately at people gathered outside the church
- The attack was the second against Christians in the area this month
Protesters try to attack driver after truck speeds through anti-Iran demonstration in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with marchers demonstrating in support of the Iranian people, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver.
The U-Haul truck, with its side mirrors shattered, was stopped several blocks away and surrounded by police cars. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed officers keeping the crowd at bay as demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.
The police department confirmed its officers were on the scene but didn’t immediately say if anyone was arrested.
Two people were evaluated by paramedics and both declined treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
Several hundred people had gathered Sunday afternoon in the Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian theocracy. The LA police department eventually issued a dispersal order, and by 5 p.m. only about a hundred protesters were still at the scene, ABC7 reported.
Activists say a crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed more than 530 people. Protesters flooded the streets in Iran’s capital of Tehran and its second-largest city again Sunday.
