Taliban-linked militants have killed at least seven Shia tribesmen near the Afghan border as they were heading to the Kurram agency in the northwestern Pakistan.
The victims were returning home from vacation in the United Arab Emirates when they were stopped near Afghanistan's Paktia province on the border with Pakistan, a Pakistani official told Press TV correspondent on condition of anonymity.
Militants looted and then shot dead the Shia Muslims from Tori tribe, who were bound for Kurram's Parachinar district via Afghanistan, he added.
The incident comes a day after Afghanistan shut down a key route to the populated Kurram tribal region, which has raised concerns of a 'dire humanitarian crisis' in the Taliban-dominated mountainous area.
The residents of the Parachinar, upper and lower Kurram agency used to travel for provincial capital Peshawar through Afghan province Paktia and Kandahar since November 2007, when pro-Taliban Wahhabi militants cut off the areas from the rest of the country, imposing a crippling blockade on the Shia communities in the region.
Pakistan's pro-Taliban insurgents retain control of the tribal zone on the Afghan-Pakistani border, where they are preparing to launch fresh attacks against the foreign forces fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
The militants have also engaged in a massacre of the Shia community in Parachinar, Hangu district and much of Kurram agency, killing dozens on an almost daily basis over the past few months.
Local sources say more than 2,000 Shia Muslims have been killed in the region since the extremists launched a bloody war against them in 2007.
Many within the Shia community accuse certain Arab countries of funding Wahhabi terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the pro-Taliban elements, and of even going as far as providing them with heavy weaponry.
MRS/AKM
SOURCE: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=106412§ionid=351020401
