Gunmen targeted non-ethnic Balochis traveling on a bus and painting a house in two attacks in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing 16 people and wounding eight, police said. The attacks are sure to add to ethnic tensions in Balochistan province, where a nationalist movement led by armed ethnic Baluch groups has long sought greater provincial autonomy from the central government. They may have been inspired by Pakistan's marking Saturday of its creation and independence from Britain in 1947. In the first attack, gunmen stopped the bus in Aab-e-Ghum, a town 50 kilometers northeast of Quetta, the provincial capital. It carried Baloch and non-Baloch passengers, but the attackers identified those from the eastern Punjab province, forced them off the bus and shot them, police official Ismail Kurd said. The second attack occurred in Quetta, when gunmen burst into a home and killed six Punjabi laborers who were painting it. The gunmen also wounded three other laborers, senior police official Hamid Shakeel said. Police would not speculate on who was behind the attacks or whether they were linked. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and it was unclear exactly how many gunmen were involved. Balochistan is a rugged region with a lengthy and porous border with Afghanistan and Iran.
