ISLAMABAD: At least three people were killed and nine others injured when a roadside bomb hit a passenger van near Gilgit town in northern Pakistan yesterday, officials said.
“The incident occurred near Haramosh village on Gilgit-Skardu road (around 30 miles south of Gilgit) when a passenger van was hit by a roadside bomb blast,” Zain Muhammad, a police official in Gilgit, said.
He said the injured included five women, two men and three children, adding that all the passengers were Shias. “It’s a sectarian attack, the passenger van was going to Haramosh which is a completely Shia populated valley,” he said.
Muhammad Ali Zia, another senior police official, confirmed the incident.
A senior official of the Gilgit-Baltistan home department said the federal interior ministry had issued an alert to the Gilgit-Baltistan government last week warning of a possible sectarian attack. AFP
