PAKISTAN (Reuters) - Gunmen in Pakistan fired on the vehicle of a politician driving past worshippers leaving a mosque on a Muslim holiday on Friday, killing nine people and wounding 27 in the city of Quetta, police said.
Quetta is the capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where several militant groups are active, including the Pakistani Taliban, who claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack that killed 30 people at a policeman's funeral on Thursday.
The United States has warned its citizens not to travel to Pakistan and has ordered non-essential staff to leave its consulate in the eastern city of Lahore because of the threat of attack. Police official Bashir Brohi said Friday's shooting seemed to have been aimed at former provincial government minister Ali Mohammad Jattack, who was passing by in a vehicle, but the motive and perpetrators were not clear.
"I was the target," Jattack told media at the scene.
"They killed innocent worshippers belonging to different communities. This is against humanity, it is brutality on the level of animals," said Jattack, who was not hurt. Brohi said most of the victims were coming out of the mosque.
"It was an armed attack on the former minister ... it was not an attack on the mosque," the police official said.
The attack is the latest in a surge of militant violence since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office two months ago, with a string of high-profile attacks in the past two weeks.
Sharif's government has not presented a security strategy, despite campaign promises to negotiate with militant groups. Security in the capital, Islamabad, was tightened in the run-up to the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which fell on Friday in Pakistan and marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
The United States shut nearly two dozen missions across the Middle East after a worldwide alert on Aug. 2, warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.
It was not clear when the Lahore consulate would open, a U.S. embassy spokeswoman said. Tension has also risen between Pakistan and its neighbor, India, this week after five Indian soldiers were killed near the border running through the disputed Kashmir region.
