Gunmen in southwest Pakistan shot dead two Shiite Muslims who had emigrated from neighboring Afghanistan almost a decade ago to escape violence there, police said Sunday.

Two men opened fire Saturday night on the family, from Afghanistan's Hazara community, who were at a bus station in Quetta preparing to travel to the southern city of Karachi.

A bomb blast targeting a vehicle carrying security forces killed a young girl and wounded 16 others -- including up to eight children -- in Pakistan's troubled southwest Saturday, police said.

The attack occurred in the Saryab area on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of the oil and gas rich Baluchistan province that borders Iran and Afghanistan.

A former minister of the Afghan Taliban who was in favor of peace talks with the Kabul government was gunned down in Pakistan's northwest city of Peshawar on Monday, Afghan Taliban sources said.

"Armed assailants riding on a motorbike shot Mullah Abdul Raqeeb, a former minister for refugees during the Taliban regime, killing him on the spot," a member of the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan told Agence France Presse.

An influential cleric who supported the Afghan Taliban in their war against U.S.-led forces has been shot dead in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, officials said on Thursday.

"Two unknown gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Maulana Abdullah Zakiri" as he was on his way to a mosque on Wednesday night, senior police official Abdul Razzaq told Agence France Presse.

After 700 grueling kilometers of walking across scorched, arid plains, some two dozen women from Pakistan's troubled southwestern Baluchistan province are nearing the end of their march to seek justice for missing loved ones.

For nearly a month they have walked for brothers, sons and husbands who have disappeared, allegedly at the hands of Pakistan's security services.

A pro-government tribal elder and six members of his family were killed when unknown gunmen stormed their home in southwest Pakistan early Tuesday, officials said.

The pre-dawn attack occurred in Dera Bugti district, some 450 kilometers southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, a hub for separatist rebels, Islamist insurgents and sectarian militants.

Pakistani authorities said Wednesday that a car bomb factory where troops confiscated more than 100 tones of chemicals had been used in recent attacks on troops and minority Shiite Muslims.

Paramilitary troops found wires, detonators and mixers to turn the chemicals into bombs during Tuesday's raid in the city of Quetta, a flashpoint for sectarian, Islamist and separatist attacks.

Scuffles broke out Wednesday as Pakistani Shiite Muslims buried the 89 victims of a second major bomb attack in five weeks, which has highlighted the government's inability to stem sectarian violence.

Shiite leaders called off a three-day nationwide protest demanding army protection after the government promised those responsible would be arrested in a "targeted operation" and relatives of the dead compensated.

Shiite families refusing to bury their dead after twin bombings in Pakistan's troubled southwestern city of Quetta vowed to continue their sit-in protest Saturday until the army takes over security.

Hundreds of protesters have gathered on the main road near the snooker hall that was the scene of Thursday's twin suicide attacks, alongside more than 60 coffins carrying the victims' shrouded bodies, senior administration official Hashim Ghilzai told AFP.

Extremist bomb attacks killed 125 people in one of Pakistan's deadliest days for years, raising concerns Friday about rising violence in the nuclear-armed country ahead of general elections.

Two suicide bombers killed 92 people and wounded 121 after they targeted a crowded snooker club in the southwestern city of Quetta Thursday, in an area dominated by Shiite Muslims from the Hazara ethnic minority.