At least 43 people were killed and 13 others wounded on Wednesday when armed men opened fire on a bus carrying members of the Ismaili community near Safoora Chowk in Karachi.
Sindh Police Inspector General Ghulam Haider Jamali said that 60 people were on board the bus when gunmen opened fire and killed 43 passengers.
He also confirmed that the armed men used 9mm pistols to carry out the attack.
Hospital sources had earlier confirmed that the dead include 25 men and 16 women. Police officials said that there were no children among the casualties.
An eye-witness said around eight men riding three to four motorcycles opened indiscriminate fire on a bus, wounding several passengers. However, video footage of the pink bus does not show bullet holes on the body of the vehicle suggesting that the attackers may have entered and fired.
A senior police official, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to the media, told Dawn that the attackers entered the bus and shot the passengers in the head.
“The gunmen stopped the bus and first fired at it from outside,” a policeman told AFP. “Then they entered inside the bus and open fire indiscriminately. After that they checked to see if anyone was left uninjured."
“The bus had a capacity of 52 passengers but it was overloaded and dozens of people were boarding it. Most of them were from (the) Ismaili community,” he added.
