Four Killed in Sectarian Clashes in South Pakistan

At least four people were killed and eight others were wounded on Monday when sectarian clashes broke out in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, police said.

"Three members of the Shiite Hazara tribe were killed by the unknown gunmen, while a Sunni man died in the wake of the firing by protesting Hazara youth," city police chief Abdul Razzak Cheema told AFP.

"Eight others, including two Shiite women, received bullet injuries," he said. 

The violence was sparked when an old man Shiite Hazara community was gunned down in a tea shop in the Meezan Chowk area of Quetta, the capital of the restive Baluchistan province.

Some 500 youths from the minority took to the streets in protests bearing the body of the elderly man, staging a sit-in outside the office of the Inspector General of Police. 

But their demonstration turned angry when it emerged another two Hazara men had been killed when gunmen stormed a medical clinic, injuring two women including one who was pregnant with their indiscriminate fire.

News of the second attack infuriated the demonstrators, some of whom were armed, who went on a rampage around the city and opened fire on a crowd outside a Sunni mosque, killing one and injuring five.

Another senior police official in the area, Qasim Sacheli, confirmed the causalities.

Sectarian violence -- in particular by Sunni hardliners against Shiites, who make up roughly 20 percent of Pakistan's 200 million people -- has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade. 

In the latest bloodshed, 45 Shiites were massacred in the southern city Karachi this month.