Gunmen opened fire on vehicles carrying mainly Shia Muslims on a key highway in Pakistan’s restive northwest on Thursday, killing at least 38 people and wounding 20 others, police said.

Pakistan’s interior minister referred to the attack as an act of terrorism, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement that “enemies of peace in the country have attacked a convoy of innocent citizens, an act that amounts to a pure brutality”.

A local government official told the AFP news agency that the dead included police officers; the convoy was traveling with a police escort.

Witnesses said the attackers fired indiscriminately at a convoy of vehicles on either side of the highway over a period of several minutes.

Crowds gathered outside the hospital in the nearby town of Parachinar, waiting for the injured.

Sectarian tensions high in the border region

The attack took place in the Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims have killed dozens in recent months.

Kurram is one of the few areas in Sunni-majority Pakistan where Shia Muslims make up the majority of the population.

It is also close to the border with Afghanistan, now ruled by the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban, and an area of ​​operation for anti-Shia militant groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and an Islamic State offshoot.

About 50 people from any of Kurram’s religious communities were killed in clashes in July over a land dispute, leading to rising tensions and subsequent violence.

Thursday’s shooting took place on a highway that had been closed for weeks following another attack on passenger vehicles last month; it was reopened only to those traveling with police escorts.

Local police official Azmat Ali told The Associated Press (AP) that several vehicles were traveling in a convoy from the nearby town of Parachinar to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

No group immediately claimed responsibility.

On Wednesday this week, a suicide attack in the same province at a security checkpoint killed 12 soldiers and wounded others.

msh/kb (AFP, AP, dpa)