Gunmen in volatile southwest Pakistan shot seven bus passengers dead after identifying them as being from another region, officials said Wednesday.

Security forces have been battling sectarian, ethnic and separatist violence for decades in impoverished but mineral-rich Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran. Attacks on security forces and ethnic groups have sharply increased in the past few years, especially against labourers from Punjab, the country’s most populous and prosperous province and also a major recruitment base for the military.

Attackers late on Tuesday burst the tyres of a bus that was travelling through Balochistan along a highway close to the provincial border with Punjab, Saadat Hussain, a senior government official in the area, told AFP.

Gunmen boarded the bus and demanded to see the identity cards of passengers.

“The passengers belonging to Punjab province… were taken off by the terrorists and killed,” Hussain said.

“They were lined up and shot dead.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

However, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is the most active group in the region, killing six people in a bombing in January.

The separatist militants killed at least 39 people in coordinated attacks last year that largely targeted ethnic Punjabis. 

In November, the BLA claimed responsibility for a bombing at Quetta’s main railway station that killed 26 people, including 14 soldiers.

The militants have in the past also targeted energy projects with foreign financing — most notably from China — accusing outsiders of exploiting the resource-rich region while excluding residents in the poorest part of Pakistan.

According to an AFP count, since January 1 at least 67 people, the vast majority members of the security forces, have been killed in violence carried out by armed groups fighting against the state – mainly in the west bordering Afghanistan.

Last year was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistan, with a surge in attacks that killed more than 1,600 people, including 685 members of the police or security forces, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based analysis group.

The violence is largely limited to the country’s border regions with Afghanistan in the north and south, with attacks in major cities increasingly rare.

It comes as the Champions Trophy tournament will kick off in Pakistan from Wednesday, with eight international teams visiting Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore under improved security. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)