Attacks against Shias, Christians and other minorities escalate in Pakistan as IS targets country

In a brazen assault, gunmen donning police uniforms attacked a bus carrying Shia Ismaili community members and shot the passengers in the head, killing at least 47 people in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi. This was the the latest in a series of terror attacks targeting minorities.

This is the first attack in the country officially claimed by the Islamic State group.

In November last year, the provincial government of Balochistan conveyed a confidential report to the federal government and law enforcement agencies warning of increased activity of the Islamic State group.

According to Time Magazine , the Pakistani government has issued reports warning that “IS” or “Daesh” (as it is known by its Arabic acronym) has collaborated with sectarian militant groups, like Jundallah and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, along the border with Iran. Elsewhere, in November 2014, a series of former Pakistani Taliban militants announced their allegiance to ISIS and al-Baghdadi.

The ‘secret information report’ states that IS has claimed to have recruited a massive 10 to 12,000 followers from the Hangu and Kurram Agency tribal areas, says  a report by Dawn News .

The report also warns that the group aims to stir up sectarian unrest by mobilising the local militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to carry out attacks against Pakistan’s minority Shiite Muslim community, further destabilizing a country that is already a stronghold for Taliban and al Qaeda elements. Most Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims. Mistrust has existed between Shiites and Sunnis for around 1,400 years .

Police officials said it appeared that six to eight assailants on motorbikes first opened fire on the bus just near the Dow Medical College and then entered the bus when it stopped at Safoora Chorangi, Gulistan-e-Johar area of Karachi.

The attackers killed 47 people and wounded more than 20 others before fleeing from the scene. According to news agencies, the militants left leaflets on the bus that used a derogatory Arabic word for Shi’ites, blaming them for “barbaric atrocities … in the Levant, Iraq and Yemen.”

This is not the first time that the members of the Shia community have been targeted in Karachi. Pakistan has seen a rise in sectarian violence in recent years particularly against minority Shias who represent around 20 percent of the country’s Muslim population.

Human Rights Watch recorded dozens of attacks on Shia in 2013 , including some of the worst attacks on the community in Pakistan’s history. More than 800 Shia have been killed in targeted attacks in Pakistan since 2012.

In January, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shia mosque in Shikarpur in the Sindh province killing 61 worshippers and bystanders.

On 3 March 2013, a powerful bomb blast in the city of Karachi in the area of Abbas Town killed 45 people and wounded 150 others. The bomb exploded outside a Shia Mosque as people were leaving from prayers.

The number of incidents related to attacks on minorities in Pakistan is continuously increasing in the country. A suicide attack on the historic All Saints Church in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan on September 22, 2013, killed at least 85 Christian worshippers and left more than 100 injured in one of the deadliest attacks on the Christian minority in Pakistan, according to EOPM .

On 15 March 2015, two churches in Lahore were bombed during Sunday services, killing 15 people and wounding seventy others.

Another minority community targeted in Pakistan is the Ahmadi community.

On 29th July, 2014, militants killed 3 Shia muslims on Eid day in Quetta and  Karachi. In another incident the minority Ahmadi community were targeted where one unborn baby, two girls and a woman were burned alive by Muslims over an allegedly blasphemous picture on Facebook.  An Ahmadi family in Gojra were poisoned and shot dead by unknown assailants.

With inputs from agencies.